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Nicolas Steno
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Blessed
Niels Steensen
Vicar Apostolic of Nordic Missions
Portrait of Steno as bishop (1868)
Portrait of Steno as bishop (1868)
See Titiopolis
Appointed 21 August 1677
by Pope Innocent XI
Term ended 5 December 1686
Predecessor Valerio Maccioni
Successor Friedrich von Tietzen[notes 1]
Other post(s) Titular Bishop of Titiopolis
Orders
Ordination 13 April 1675[2]
Consecration 19 September 1677
by Saint Gregorio Barbarigo[3][4]
Personal details
Born Niels Steensen
1 January 1638
[NS: 11 January 1638]
Copenhagen, Denmark-Norway
Died 25 November 1686 (aged 48)
[NS: 5 December 1686]
Schwerin, Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Buried Basilica of San Lorenzo, Italy
Nationality Danish
Denomination Roman Catholic
Parents
father: Steen Pedersen[5]
mother: Anne Nielsdatter[6]
Occupation
Scientist: anatomy, paleontology, stratigraphy, geology
Clergyman: Counter-Reformation in Northern Germany
Previous post(s)
Auxiliary Bishop of Münster (1680–1683)
Coat of arms Coat of arms of Bishop Nicolas Steno. The cross symbolizes faith and the heart, the natural sciences.
Sainthood
Feast day 5 December
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church
Beatified 23 October 1988
Rome, Vatican City
by Pope John Paul II
Niels Steensen (Danish: Niels Steensen; Latinized to Nicolaus Steno or Nicolaus Stenonius[notes 2]; 1 January 1638 – 25 November 1686[9][10] [NS: 11 January 1638 – 5 December 1686][9]) was a Danish scientist, a pioneer in both anatomy and geology who became a Catholic bishop in his later years. Steensen was trained in the classical texts on science; however, by 1659 he seriously questioned accepted knowledge of the natural world.[11] Importantly he questioned explanations for tear production, the idea that fossils grew in the ground and explanations of rock formation. His investigations and his subsequent conclusions on fossils and rock formation have led scholars to consider him one of the founders of modern stratigraphy and modern geology.[12][13] The importance of Steensen's foundational contributions to geology may be gauged from the fact that half of the twenty papers in a recent miscellany volume on The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment focus on Steensen, the "preeminent Baroque polymath and founder of modern geologic thought".[14]

Born to a Lutheran family, Steensen converted to Catholicism in 1667. After his conversion, his interest in the natural sciences rapidly waned giving way to his interest in theology.[15] At the beginning of 1675, he decided to become a priest. Four months later, he was ordained in the Catholic clergy in Easter 1675. As a clergyman, he was later appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nordic Missions and Titular Bishop of Titopolis by Pope Innocent XI. Steensen played an active role in the Counter-Reformation in Northern Germany. The canonization process began in 1938 and Pope John Paul II beatified Steensen in 1988.[16]


Contents
1 Early life and career
2 Scientific contributions
2.1 Anatomy
2.2 Paleontology
2.3 Geology and stratigraphy
2.4 Crystallography
3 Religious studies
4 Beatification
5 Legacy
6 Major works
7 References
7.1 Notes
7.2 Citations
7.3 Bibliography
8 Further reading
9 External links
Early life and career

Portrait of Niels Steensen (1666–1677). Unsigned but attributed to court painter Justus Sustermans. (Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy)[17]
Niels Steensen was born in Copenhagen on New Year's Day 1638 (Julian calendar), the son of a Lutheran goldsmith who worked regularly for King Christian IV of Denmark. He became ill at age three, suffering from an unknown disease, and grew up in isolation during his childhood. In 1644 his father died, after which his mother married another goldsmith. In 1654–1655, 240 pupils of his school died due to the plague. Across the street lived Peder Schumacher (who would offer Steensen a post as professor in Copenhagen in 1671). At the age of 19, Steensen entered the University of Copenhagen to pursue medical studies.[18] After completing his university education, Steensen set out to travel through Europe; in fact, he would be on the move for the rest of his life. In the Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany he came into contact with prominent physicians and scientists. These influences led him to use his own powers of observation to make important scientific discoveries.

At the urging of Thomas Bartholin, Steensen first travelled to Rostock, then to Amsterdam, where he studied anatomy under and lodged with Gerard Blasius, focusing on the lymphatic system. Within a few months Steensen moved to Leiden, where he met the students Jan Swammerdam, Frederik Ruysch, Reinier de Graaf, Franciscus de le Boe Sylvius, a famous professor, and Baruch Spinoza.[19] At the time Descartes was publishing on the working of the brain, and Steensen doubted Descartes's explanation of the origin of tears[20] as produced by the brain. Invited to Paris by Henri Louis Habert de Montmor and Pierre Bourdelot, he there met Ole Borch and Melchisédech Thévenot who were interested in new research and in demonstrations of his skills. In 1665 Steensen travelled to Saumur, Bordeaux and Montpellier, where he met Martin Lister and William Croone, who introduced Steensen's work to the Royal Society.

After travelling through France, he settled in Italy in 1666 – at first as professor of anatomy at the University of Padua and then in Florence as in-house physician of Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinando II de' Medici, who supported arts and science and whom Steensen had met in Pisa.[21] Steensen was invited to live in the Palazzo Vecchio; in return he had to gather a cabinet of curiosities. Steensen went to Rome and met Pope Alexander VII and Marcello Malpighi, whom he admired. On his way back he watched a Corpus Christi procession in Livorno and wondered if he had the right belief.[22]

Scientific contributions
Anatomy
Main article: Parotid duct
During his stay in Amsterdam, Steensen discovered a previously undescribed structure, the "ductus Stenonis" (the duct of the parotid salivary gland) in sheep, dog and rabbit heads. A dispute with Blasius over credit for the discovery arose, but Steensen's name remained associated with this structure known today as the Stensen's duct.[23] In Leiden, Steensen studied the boiled heart of a cow, and determined that it was an ordinary muscle[24][25] and not the center of warmth as Galenus and Descartes believed.[26] In Florence Steensen focused on the muscular system and the nature of muscle contraction. He became a member of Accademia del Cimento and had long discussions with Francesco Redi. Like Vincenzo Viviani, Steensen proposed a geometrical model of muscles to show that a contracting muscle changes its shape but not its volume.[27][28]

Steensen was the first to describe the lateral line system in fish.

Paleontology
See also: History of paleontology

Elementorum myologiae specimen: Illustration from Steensen's 1667 paper comparing the teeth of a shark head with a fossil tooth
In October 1666 two fishermen caught a huge female shark near the town of Livorno, and Ferdinando II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, ordered its head to be sent to Steensen. Steensen dissected the head and published his findings in 1667. He noted that the shark's teeth bore a striking resemblance to certain stony objects, found embedded within rock formations, that his learned contemporaries were calling glossopetrae or "tongue stones". Ancient authorities, such as the Roman author Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia, had suggested that these stones fell from the sky or from the Moon. Others were of the opinion, also following ancient authors, that fossils naturally grew in the rocks. Steensen's contemporary Athanasius Kircher, for example, attributed fossils to a "lapidifying virtue diffused through the whole body of the geocosm", considered an inherent characteristic of the earth – an Aristotelian approach. Fabio Colonna, however, had already shown by burning the material to show that glossopetrae were organic matter (limestone) rather than soil minerals,[29] in his treatise De glossopetris dissertatio published in 1616.[30][31] Steensen added to Colonna's theory a discussion on the differences in composition between glossopetrae and living sharks' teeth, arguing that the chemical composition of fossils could be altered without changing their form, using the contemporary corpuscular theory of matter.

Steensen's work on shark teeth led him to the question of how any solid object could come to be found inside another solid object, such as a rock or a layer of rock. The "solid bodies within solids" that attracted Steensen's interest included not only fossils, as we would define them today, but minerals, crystals, encrustations, veins, and even entire rock layers or strata. He published his geologic studies in De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus, or Preliminary discourse to a dissertation on a solid body naturally contained within a solid in 1669. This book was his last scientific work of note.[32][notes 3] Steensen was not the first to identify fossils as being from living organisms; his contemporary Robert Hooke also argued that fossils were the remains of once-living organisms;[34] So did Chinese polymath and early geologist Shen Kuo (1031–1095).

Geology and stratigraphy

De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus (1669)
Main articles: law of superposition, principle of original horizontality, and principle of lateral continuity
Steensen, in his Dissertationis prodromus of 1669 is credited with four of the defining principles of the science of stratigraphy. His words were:

the law of superposition: "At the time when a given stratum was being formed, there was beneath it another substance which prevented the further descent of the comminuted matter and so at the time when the