Johannes Magirus

Johannes Magirus (about 1560 to 1596) was a German physician and natural philosopher, born at Fritzlar of a Lutheran background. He studied at the University of Padua under the Italian philosopher Jacopo Zabarella and took a medical degree at the University of Marburg in 1585. His Physiologiae Peripateticae libri sex, published after his death in 1597, was a textbook treatment of Aristotelian philosophy that drew on Hermolao Barbaro, Gasparo Contarini, Thomas Erastus, Philipp Melanchthon, Francesco Patrizzi, Julius Caesar Scaliger, Jakob Schegk, Francesco Vimercato and Zabarella, among others. The book stayed in use for fifty years and more: it was used to teach physics in the early years of Harvard College, and it was one of the works through which Isaac Newton was introduced to natural philosophy.