MARCI, Jan Marek

M. attended high school in Czech Litomyšl and finished his Latin studies at a Jesuit grammar school in Jindřichův Hradec, as well as the University of Olomouc. As the Master of philosophy he studied medicine at Prague University from 1622 to 1625. He remained connected to the Prague University all his life. In 1626 he was elected associate professor and in 1630 full professor of medicine; from 1638 to 1664 he served as Dean of the medical school and in 1662/63 as its Rector. M. also performed the functions of provincial hygienist and imperial adviser, as well as the personal physician of Ferdinand III. and Leopold I.
M’s first areas of work included neurophysiology (epileptology) and embryology. This brought him close to some William Harvey’s works on mammalian reproduction. With his wide-ranging interests in the fields of physics, chemistry, alchemy, astronomy and hermetism, M. is considered a versatile scholar of the Baroque era. As a doctor he supported the natural treatment methods and procedures, strengthening the organism and a healthy diet. In addition to his merits for the development of medical science M. is also known as the first Czech physicist who referred to Galileo Galilei. In De proportione motus from 1639 he was concerned with the basic knowledge of mechanics, especially with the free fall, oscillation and quality of elastic bodies. M. was also the first to clearly distinguish between the characteristics of flexible, inflexible and fragile bodies, and thus contributed to theories on materials characteristics. M’s extensive monograph Thaumantias. Liber de arcu coelesti from 1648 summarizes the problems of optics, among other things, the reflection and light refraction, the emergence of rainbow and the first observation of the dispersion of a light phenomenon. In it he summarized the results of his experiments, which showed that colour light rays belong to different angles of refraction and these colour rays do not dismember in further passage through the prism.
Only modern times showed the value of M’s scientific works on physiology, the mechanics of colliding bodies, optics and spectroscopy. Within the Czech Republic M. was relatively isolated and was pushed in an even greater isolation by the European situation during the Thirty Years’ War. In spite of all that, he was familiar with all the relevant scientific works of his time, which marks the beginning of the exact sciences.