Urban Hjärne

He was born at Skworitz near Nyenschantz in Swedish Ingria. He was the son of vicar Erlandus Jonæ Hiærne (1596-1654) and Christina Tomasdotter Schmidt (1615-1682).

He was admitted in 1655 to the high school gymnasium in Dorpat. He went to Arva, where he studied until 1657. He entered Uppsala University in 1658. He began his medical education at Uppsala in 1661. For several years he visited Northern Europe's leading research center for medicine. He travelled to the Netherlands, England and France. In 1670 he became a doctor of medicine at Angers, France. In 1674 he settled as a physician in Stockholm where his practice primarily served the aristocracy.[3]

In 1669 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was appointed first physician to the King Charles XI of Sweden in 1684 and was ennobled in 1689. He became assessor of the Board of Mines (Bergskollegium) in 1675. He became head of the Laboratorium Chemicum in 1683. [4] [5]

He was also the author of Stratonice, sometimes claimed to be the first Swedish novel, a partly autobiographical romance of seduction begun in 1665 and published in several parts, completed in 1668.[6]

He built a scientific library of 3,500 books, one of the largest in Sweden. He married three times: firstly Maria Svahn; secondly Catharina Elisabeth Bergenhielm; and thirdly Elisabeth Carlsdotter. He died during 1724 in Stockholm and was buried at Bromma Church.

• "Library and Archive". Royal Society. Retrieved 27 November 2012.

• Pierer, Heinrich August (1859). Pierer's Universal-Lexikon der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart: Oder, Neuestes encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der Wissenschaften, Künste und Gewerbe. p. 416.
• Meyer, Hermann Julius (1850). Das grosse Conversations-Lexicon für die gebildeten Stände: In Verbindung mit Staatsmännern, Gelehrten, Künstlern und Technikern herausgegeben von J. Meyer. \Abth I, Bd.i-vi; vii, Abth.1,3–4;viii–xxiii;II,i-xv (in 45 volumes). Druck und Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts. p. 887.