Nuno Castel-Branco

Reevaluates Nicolaus Steno's contributions to anatomy and early modern science, examining his interdisciplinary interests in their historical context. Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) was a renowned anatomist in his lifetime. He reformed the anatomical understanding of glands, argued that the heart was a muscle, renamed the so-called female testicles as ovaries, and developed a mathematical model for understanding muscle contraction—discoveries that were...