Troels Kardel · Paul Maquet
Editors

2013
Nicolaus Steno
Biography and Original Papers
of a 17th Century Scientist
Edited and Translated
by Troels Kardel and Paul Maquet

Boni enim interpretis est, non ipsa modo verba seorsum considerare, sed & cum antecedentibus simul & conseqventibus conferre. (Steno, OPH I,66) A good interpreter considers not only the words as such but also confers them with what precedes and what follows. VilhelmMaar’s scholarly edition from 1910, the Nicolai Stenonis Opera Philosophica (OPH), is after one hundred years still the foundation for the study of Niels Stensen’s scientific works in their original languages. Most works were written in Latin, one is in French and two small works were published later in Italian. Gustav Scherz’s Niels Stensen, eine Biographie, for 25 years the most exhaustive existing biography, provides the documentation that lies behind the author’s contribution on Stensen in the Dictionary of scientific biography.a Both these editions came out in small numbers, the biography from a mainly religious publisher in the former GDR.