NICOLAUS

STENO (1631-1686)  , Danish naturalist, was born at Copenhagen in 1631, and studied medicine and anatomy in that city and in Paris . After a period of travel he settled in Italy (1666) at first as professor of anatomy at Padua, and then in Florence as house-physician to the grand-duke Ferdinand II. of Tuscany . He returned to his native city in 1672 to become professor of anatomy, but, having become a Roman Catholic, he found it expedient to return to Florence, and was ultimately made apostolic vicar of Lower Saxony . He died at Schwerin in Mecklenburg, on the 25th of November 1686 . His fame rests on De solid() infra solidum naturaliter contento, published at Florence in 1669 . In this notable work Steno described various gems, minerals and petrif actions (fossils) enclosed within solid rocks . He compared the fossil with the living organisms, and distinguished marine and fluviatile formations . He argued also in favour of the original horizontality of sedimentary deposits . See Di Nicola Stenone e dei suoi studii geologici in Italia, by G . Capellini (1870) ; K . A. von Zittel's History of Geology and Palaeontology (Eng. ed., 1901) ; and W . J .

Sollas, in

Science Progress for Jan . 1898 .