Johann Jacob Baier

Johann Jacob Baier (1677 to 1735) was a German physician and naturalist, born in Jena, the son of the theologian Johann Wilhelm Baier. He studied at Jena, took a medical degree at Halle, and from 1704 was a professor at the university at Altdorf near Nuremberg. In 1731 he became personal physician to the Emperor and president of the Leopoldina academy. He wrote on the geology and fossils of the Nuremberg region in his book Oryctographia Norica, holding the biblical Deluge to be the only catastrophe in earth history. He also assembled a collection of fossils and nearly six hundred portraits of learned people, and wrote a biographical account of the medical faculty at Altdorf.