János Apáczai Csere (Apáca, 1625 - Kolozsvár, 1659)
He studied in the Gyulafehérvár Calvinist secondary school, as Heinrich Bisteeerfeld's student. He travelled to Holland with the help of a scholarship, where he gained a doctorate degree and got married (to Aletta van der Maet). He came home in 1653, and he had a job in Gyulafehérvár. He wanted to reform the Transylvanain educational system in a puritan way, but he was unsuccessful. In his life's work the modern spiritual trends of the age (encyclopedism, puritanism, cartesianism) formed a harmonious system. His work, Hungarian Logic appeared in 1654, in which he tried to make the specialist language of philosophy more Hungarian. His main work, the Hungarian Encyclopaedia (Utrecht, 1655) is based on Bisterfeld's and Alsted's works and findings. Its aim is to summarise the scientific achievements of the age in Hungarian for school use. The great benefit of his work is his scientific thinking and the formation of Hungarian terminology for science. His opponents, who were orthodox Calvinists, humiliated him in a public debate, and György Rákóczy II dismissed him from his job of the time (1655). Thanks to the influence of Lórántffy Zsuzsa one year later he got a job as a teacher in Kolozsvár. By that time he had problems with his health - as his student, Miklós Bethlen put it "because of awful learning", and he died soon after.
Book:
Barna Szénássy: History of Mathematics in Hungary until the 20th Century (Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 1992).
Articles:
A. Dankanits: Das Interesse für Astronomie im Transsilvanien des XV.--XVI. Jahrhunderts, in Noesis II Travaux Colloq., Comité Roumain d'Histoire Philos. Sci., Bucharest, 1973 (Bucharest, 1974), 219-222.
J. Zemplén: The reception of Copernicanism in Hungary, in A contribution to the history of natural philosophy and physics in the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, Études sur l'audience de la théorie héliocentrique, Sympos. Union Internat. Hist. Philos. Sci., Torun, 1973 I (Wroclaw, 1972), 311-356.
Biographies:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Apaczai.html
Who was Apáczai Csere János?
Thousand Years of Hungarian Thought
Links:
Education and the Sciences / János Apáczai Csere on the importance of education
Autorithy: CROSS AND CRESCENT - THE TURKISH AGE IN HUNGARY (1526-1699) / Way of life / Education / Teachers