Magnus Pegel

Magnus Pegel, also Magnus Pegelius, born in Rostock on 15 May 1547 and dead at Stettin in 1619, was a German physician, mathematician and university teacher, the son of the professor of rhetoric Konrad Pegel. He took his master's degree in 1569 and in the following year a medical doctorate with a work on the plague, taught mathematics and astrology at Rostock, was called to Helmstedt as professor of mathematics in 1579, returned to Rostock in 1581 and became full professor of mathematics there in 1591. He was dean and in 1593 and 1594 rector of the university, and in 1605 he became with Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler an adviser to Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. He is regarded as a father of blood transfusion, dealt with intravenous injection and developed obstetric forceps, and in 1604 his Thesaurus rerum selectarum described projects such as airships, submarines, pontoon bridges, automatic firearms and a memory art. He fought all his life for a mechanics based on experiment.