Bernhardus varenius biography template

(b. Hitzacker, in the district of Hannover, Germany, 1622: d. Amsterdam, Holland, 1650)

physical geography.

Son of the court preacher to the duke of Brunswick, Varenius spent his early years at Uelzen, the home of the duke.

From 1640 to 1642 he studied in the Gymnasium of Hamburg, and from there he went to the universities at Königsberg (1643–1645) and Leiden (1645–1649), devoting himself to mathematics, medicine, and natural history. He took his medical degree at Leiden in 1649, and settled in Amsterdam with the intention of practicing medicine.

From some remarks in his writing it is evident that Varenius felt he had little future in Hannover, which had been devastated by the Thirty Years’ War.

In Amsterdam the recent discoveries of Abel Tasman, Willem Schouten, and other Dutch navigators, and his friendship with Willem Blaeu as well as other geographers led him to concentrate on geography rather than medicine, much to his own econom