This is a rolling post collating all the contribution made today to celebrate the 501st birthday of the Swiss polymath Conrad Gesner.
Conrad’s birthday has ended and with it this rolling blog closes. We thank all of those who contributed to #GesnerDay 2017 and made it a great birthday party for Switzerland’s best loved polymath. We hope you will all be back at the same time next year for #GesnerDay 2018.
Conrad Gesner based on a painting by Tobias Stimmer (1539–1584)
Celebrating Gesner at the Smithsonian: Behind the scenes tour video
The Guardian: 16th century ‘zoological goldmine’ discovered – in pictures
Spiky blowfish Gessner had this image drawn in Frankfurt from a dried blowfish. Such dried fish decorated the shops of many European apothecaries at the time. Gessner used this drawing as the model for a printed full-page illustration in the fish volume (1558) of his Historia Animalium, but he made a subtle change. While a hook (from which the fish can be hung) pulls up the dried skin into a bump, that hook disappeared in the printed illustration. In this way he turned a portrait of an individual dried fish into a scientific representation of a fish species. Photograph: Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam
Armadillo (Family Dasypodidae). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 1 (1551) in @BioDivLibrary
h/t Historical SciArt @HistSciArt
The Renaissance Mathematicus: Putting the lead in your pencil
The first ever published illustration of a pencil from Conrad Gesner’s De rerum fossilium
Fox (Genus Vulpes). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 1 (1551) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
Dracones (from Gesner’s 1587 »Historiae Animalium Liber V, qui est de Serpentium natura«) h/t Patrick J Burns
Shark teeth depicted in C. Gesner´s “De Rerum fossilium…[]”. Such figures made it possible for other naturalists to compare their fossils with specimens of other collectors or hosted in private, non easily accessible, collections. However the quality of the used wood cuts was still poor and were soon replaced by copper engravings, with a higher reproduction quality.
Fraumünster and the Münster close on the altarpiece of Hans Leu the Older (1460-1507) Where Conrad Gesner and Georg Joachim Rheticus went to school and became friends Source: Wikimedia Commons
University of Glasgow Library: Conrad Gesner: Illustrated Inventories with the use of Wonderful Woodcuts
Conrad Gesner ‘Tiger’ (Sp Coll Hunterian A.a.1.2)
Hyper allergic: The 16th-Century Fossil Book that First Depicted the Pencil
Frontispiece image from Conrad Gessner’s ‘De Rerum Fossilium Lapidum et Gemmarum Maxime, Figuris et Similitudinibus Liber’ (1565)
Green Lizard (Suborder Lacertilia). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary:
h/t Historical SciArt
Jeff Ollerton’s Biodiversity Blog: Celebrating Conrad Gesner Day 2017
Gessner House Zürich
Photo: Jeff Ollerton 2008
Conrad Gesner, 1st depiction of basalt columns in his “De omni rerum fossilium genere,..” (1565) h/t David Bressan
Frog Metamorphosis (Genus Rana). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary h/t Historical SciArt
Lobster (Family Nephropidae). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
Today is Conrad Gesner’s 501st birthday! Explore his publications in Biodiversity Heritage Library
Sea Stars! Class Asteroidea for #GesnerDay! Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
Bird-of-Paradise (Family Paradisaeidae). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 3 (1585) @BioDivLibrary h/t Historical SciArt
Gesner’s (born #OTD 1516) “Historia Animalium” is full of monsters. Why? Monsters Are Real #GesnerDay
Scorpions (Order Scorpiones). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
Hedgehog (Subfamily Erinaceinae), our final post for #GesnerDay. #SciArt from C…
NYAM Blog: Happy Bird-day, Conrad Gesner
SciHi Blog: Conrad Gessner’s Truly Renaissance Knowledge
The Pachyderm, from Conrad Gesner ‘Historiae animalium‘ (1551-58)
Happy B-day, Conrad Gesner! G’s #marginalia re bison in his copy of Icones 1560 #GesnerDay #histSTM @ZBZuerich h/t Michal Choptiany
Peacock (Genus Pavo). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 3 (1585) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historial SciArt
Gurnard (Dactylopterus volitans?). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary h/t Historical SciArt
Renaissance Quarterly: Ann Blair: The 2016 Josephine Waters Bennett Lecture: Humanism and Printing in the Work of Conrad Gessner
Anglerfish (Order Lophiiformes). Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
Gesner’s (born #OTD 1516) “De rerum fossilium” is the 1st systematically illustrated book on #fossils
Sea Monsters! #SciArt from Conrad Gesner’s Icones Animalium Quadrupedum Vivipar…
Sea Monsters for #GesnerDay! Conrad Gesner, Historia Animalium, Liber 2 (1586) in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
The naturalist’s library. Conducted by Sir William Jardine: MEMOIR OF GESNER h/t William Ulate
h/t William Ulate
Until next year, #GesnerDay! Here’s your #MondayMotivationOwl! Explore more of Gesner’s works in @BioDivLibrary: h/t Historical SciArt
The Renaissance Mathematicus 
Thanks for the link! Two observations: (i) almost all of the tweets and posts I’ve seen have been animal-focused, and I wonder in Gesner the Botanist is rather forgotten about? (ii) It’s Ollerton, not “Offerton”. Though when I was a kid my Cub Scout pack did once win a competition for the “Offerton Shield”. True story 🙂
Will correct! The problem is that his plant book was not published in his lifetime, so most people know him as the ‘father of zoology’ that is why the emphasis is on the animals. As I have commented on numerous occasions the manuscript for his plant book is in the rare books room of Erlangen University my alma mater and my home town. I have seen it, the drawings are amazing.
Thanks Thony. Yes, but one might have thought that naming a whole plant family after him may have evened it out a bit…
Good points about his influence on Botany! I am limited by availability of digitized books for sharing SciArt, but I have put in a request to BHL to have the Historia Plantarum digitized and added to the library. I’m sure it will take some time.
It would be great if it could be!
As this year has largely concentrated on Conrad the zoologist I suggest that we could aim to make #GesnerDay 2018 about Conrad the botanist
I envy you having seen the plant notebooks. I am an aging freak who fell in love with herbaria and all things botanical. I think the Gesner plant watercolors are remarkable.
That would be great Thony.
So start writing your contribution now ;))
I’m going to start looking out for Gesneriaceae in botanic gardens and on field work, and take photographs 🙂
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