(1602 - 1680)
Athanasius Kircher was a Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works on subjects ranging from Egyptology to geology, music to medicine. He was one of the first to observe microbes under a microscope and proposed that disease was caused by microorganisms. His museum in Rome was one of the first public museums. He attempted to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics and studied volcanism and magnetism.