Bernhardus Varenius


Varenius, Bernhardus

 

(Bernhard Varen). Born 1622 in Hanover; died 1650 or 1651 in Leiden. Dutch geographer. Varenius was the author of Geographia Generalis, in which, from a systematized knowledge of the earth, he first made the distinction between general and special (regional) geography. The first edition of his book appeared in Amsterdam in 1650, and the second and third in 1672 and 1681 in Cambridge, edited by Newton. In the reign of Peter I, the book was translated into Russian and issued under the title General Geography, the Celestial and Terrestrial-Maritime Regions Together With Their Properties and Occurrences Therein, Described in Three Volumes (1718).