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Cornelius Gemma

Cornelius Gemma of Leuven, identified as medicus et philosophus, "physician and philosopher"
Illustration of an aurora by Cornelius Gemma, the first to be published for scientific purposes, from his 1575 book on the 1572 supernova

Cornelius (or Cornelio) Gemma (28 February 1535 – 12 October 1578)[a] was a Flemish physician, astronomer and astrologer, and the oldest son of cartographer and instrument-maker Gemma Frisius. He was a professor of medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven, and shared in his father's efforts to restore ancient Ptolemaic practice to astrology, drawing on the Tetrabiblos.

As an astronomer, Gemma is significant for his observations of a lunar eclipse in 1569 and of the 1572 supernova appearing in Cassiopeia, which he recorded on 9 November, two days before Tycho Brahe, calling it a "New Venus."[1] With Brahe, he was one of the few astronomers to identify the Great Comet of 1577 as superlunary. Gemma is also credited with publishing the first scientific illustration of the aurora, in his 1575 book on the supernova.[2]

Another milestone appears in his medical writings: in 1552, Gemma published the first illustration of a human tapeworm.[3]

Gemma's two major works, De arte cyclognomica (Antwerp, 1569) and De naturae divinis characterismis (Antwerp, 1575), have been called "true 'hidden gems' in early modern intellectual history," bringing together such topics as medicine, astronomy, astrology, teratology, divination, eschatology, and encyclopaedism.[4]

Gemma also has the distinction of being called "the first true orchid hobbyist, in the modern sense."[5]


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  1. ^ University of Otago Library exhibition note for The Earth & Beyond online Archived 12 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine; and R.H. Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius, "Cassiopeia." The star is now identified as SN 1572.
  2. ^ University of Oklahoma Libraries, History of Science Collections, Recent Acquisitions, "The First Book Printed on Tycho Brahe's Printing Press at Uraniborg: Diarium, 1586," The Lynx 2 (November 2005), p. 9 online Archived 20 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine with Gemma's illustration.
  3. ^ University of Würzburg, Parasitology Research & Encyclopedic Reference of Parasitology online.
  4. ^ Cornelius Gemma: Cosmology, Medicine and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Louvain conference proceedings website. Archived 6 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Pierre Jacquet, "History of Orchids in Europe, from Antiquity to the 17th Century," ''Orchid Biology: Reviews and Perspectives 6 (1994), as cited by Joseph Arditti, Orchid Biology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), p. 27 online.

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