Ole Borch

Ole Borch (1626 – 1690) (latinized to Olaus Borrichius) was a Danish scientist, physician, grammarian, and poet, most famous today for being the teacher at the Vor Frue Skole in Copenhagen of Nicholas Steno. Borch had studied medicine at the University of Copenhagen and distinguished himself in the plague of 1654. He was later a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is one of the fathers of experimental science in Denmark where he was patronized by Joachim Gersdorff, the royal seneschal. He also extracted oxygen out of saltpeter in 1678. It was Borch who first introduced Steno to fossils such as glossopetrae which Borch used, as was common for the time, in medicines. Borch was a noted traveller and his well recorded journals of his travels of 1660-6 are an important document of the European Scientific climate in the late Seventeenth Century. He is the founder of Collegium Mediceum/Borchs Kollegium in central Copenhagen.

Works

 * De ortu et progressu Chemiae, 1668 ;
 * Hermetis, Aegypiorum et Chemicorum sapientia, 1674 ;
 * Conspectus chemicorum scriptorum, 1696 (posthumously).