Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) was a German Jesuit priest and polymath who spent most of his life in Rome. Kircher published a large number of substantial books on a very wide variety of subjects, such as Egyptology, geology, and music theory. Kircher's greatest work is Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652-54) a vast study of Egyptology and comparative religion. He was not always critical, and he had a tendency to fill the holes in his knowledge with mere speculations. Nevertheless, his works, written in Latin, had a wide circulation in the 17th century, and they contributed to the dissemination of scientific information to a wider circle of readers. Many of Kircher's ideas were displayed on the exhibit "The World is Bound with Secret Knots" at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.[1] Kirchner was a recipient of the Voynich Manuscripts in 1665, sent to him by Johannes Marcus Marci in the hope of being able to decipher them. The manuscripts remained in the Collegio Romano until Victor Emmanuel II of Italy annexed the papal states in 1870.