Petrus Camper

Petrus Camper, born on 11 May 1722 and died on 7 April 1789, was a Dutch physician and a many-sided figure of the Age of Enlightenment, described as an anatomist, physiologist, midwife, zoologist, anthropologist, palaeontologist and naturalist. He was among the first to take an interest in comparative anatomy, in palaeontology and in the facial angle, and he studied the orangutan, the Javan rhinoceros and the skull of a mosasaur, which he believed was a whale. A Fellow of the Royal Society from 1750, he was also honored by academies in Göttingen, Russia, Edinburgh, France and Prussia. He designed and built tools for his patients and for surgeries, and his published lectures on craniometrical methods laid the foundation for later work in that field. This record uses only the opening summary of the cited article.