Athanasius Kircher was a seventeenth-century German Jesuit scholar whose interests knew no bounds. From optics to music to magnetism to medicine, he offered up inventions and theories for everything, and they made him famous across Europe. Holy Roman Emperors were his patrons, popes were his friends, and in his spare time he collaborated with the Baroque master Bernini.

This lecture, occasioned by John Glassie's new book A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change, will take on Kircher's place as one of history's most unforgettable figures.

Joshua Foer is a science journalist and the author of the international best-seller Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. He is the erstwhile head of the Athanasius Kircher Society. He is also the co-founder of the design competition Sukkah City, and the Atlas Obscura, an online guide to the world’s wonders and curiosities. http://www.joshuafoer.com

Lawrence Weschler was a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine for twenty years, and is the author of over a dozen books, most recently Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative. Others include Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder for which he was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and National Book Critics Circle Award, and Everything that Rises; A Book of Convergences for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 2007. He also directs the New York Institute for the Humanities. http://www.lawrenceweschler.com

John Glassie is the author of A Man of Misconceptions: The Life of an Eccentric in an Age of Change, a biography of the 17th century polymath Athanasius Kircher. A former contributing editor to The New York Times Magazine, has written for The Believer, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, Salon, Wired, and other publications. He is the author of the photo book Bicycles Locked to Poles and lives in Brooklyn, New York. http://www.johnglassie.com

Source:
http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/2012/12/postponed-athanasius-kircher-greatest.html