Collegium Curiosum Explained

The Collegium Curiosum or Collegium Experimentale was a twenty-member scientific society founded by Johann Sturm, a professor at the University of Altdorf,^[1] in 1672.^[2] It was based on the model of the Florentine Accademia del Cimento.^[2] Sturm published two volumes of the academy's proceedings in Nuremberg, under the title Collegium Experimentale sive Curiosum (1676 and 1685).^[2] It was as much a private club as a formal academy,^[3] and a lot of the time seems to have been spent with Sturm demonstrating experiments to the other members.^[1]

Proceedings

• Volume 1 (1676), available online from Wolfenbütteler Digitale Bibliothek and on Google Books
• Volume 2 (1685) available online from Sächsische Landesbibliothek — Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB) and on Google Books

Notes and References

1. Web site: Thomas Ahnert. 2002. The Culture of Experimentalism in the Holy Roman Empire: Johann Christoph Sturm (1635–1703) and the Collegium Experimentale. Sammelpunkt. Elektronisch archivierte Theorie. 2020-05-10. 2020-06-06. https://web.archive.org/web/20200606123109/http://sammelpunkt.philo.at/308/. dead.
2. Encyclopedia: 1930 . Academies: Scientific Academies . Encyclopaedia Britannica . 14. 1. 81 . en.
3. Neil Kenny, The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 184.