Comenius, Lorentz, Zeeman

John Amos Comenius was a humanist scholar, whose importance might be a bit overstated in Czech curricula and understated in most others. My connection to him is primarily through the Labyrinth of the World, a book I return to often to find a kindred lost soul.

I want to share a little lost anecdote that I have shared with all of my friends (ad nauseam, as I repeat myself often), but it is rarely shared anywhere else. Apparently, Comenius was seeking an original text by Copernicus, as he was skepical of the censorship and editorial changes made to later editions. In 1614, at age 21, he found a manuscript of De Revolucionibus owned by a widow of a mathematician in Heidelberg. This manuscript, incredibly, exists to this day, see DOI: 10.36155/PLib.9.00001. Comenius spent less than a year in Heidelberg (though I found him in some old matriculation books!), and after the purchase of the manuscripts, he walked all the way to Prague on foot for lack of funds.