He was a great Czech polymath of the period after the Battle of the White Mountain – a doctor, physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher.
He was a personal doctor of two emperors, the dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the Charles’ University and in 1662 the Rector of the Charles’ University.
He went in for refraction and decomposition of light before Isaac Newton and is considered the founder of spectroscopy.
In mechanics he was the first to spread elastic and non-elastic collisions of bodies and demonstrated them on the then fashionable billiards. He used a pendulum to measure time.
The works of J. M. Marci, a contemporary with Galileo, are our first physical monographs. Lanškroun, his native town, named its square after him, and on the occasion of his anniversary the town organized celebrations, scientific symposium, exhibition and statue unveiling.
A crater on the far side of the Moon is named after Jan Marek Marci.
Jan Marek - Marcus Marci was born in Lanškroun. He take an active part in the development of the radiation optics to such extent that he can be considered a co-founder of this physical branch. Marek was also the Rector of the Charles University and a Dean of the Faculty of Medicine there. He was also interested in meteorology.
Marci was also engaged in determining longitude on the sea. His work „De longitudine seu differentia inter duos meridianos una cum moto vero Lunae inveniendo ad tempus datae?“ from 1650 he dedicated to Philip II, the King of Spain. This problem had not been solved successfully till 1735 when John Harrison, an English clockmaker, invented chronometer.
Marci’s stay in 1635-1667 is reminded by a memorial plaque from 1967 on the house At Green Lime at 12 Melantrichova Street, in Czech and Latin:
In this house JAN … lived, an excellent physicist and doctor, the Prague University Rector 1595