(b. Geisa, near Fulda, May 2, 1602 ; d. Rome, Nov. 28, 1680), early became a Jesuit, and taught mathematics and natural philosophy in the Jesuit College at Wurzburg, where he was professor in 1630. About 1631 he was driven from Germany by the Thirty Years' War, and went in 1633 to the house of his Order at Avignon, and thence by way of Vienna (1635) to Rome, where he remained till his death. He acquired a mass of information in all departments of knowledge, and wrote books on every conceivable subject. His great work Musurgia universalis sive ars magnaconsoniet dissoni, two vols. (Rome, 1650), translated into German by Andreas Hirsch (Hall in Swabia, 1662), contains, among much rubbish, valuable m atter on the nature of sound and the theory of composition, with interesting examples from the instrumental music of Frescobaldi, Froberger and other composers of the 17th century. The second volume, on the music of the Greeks, is far from trustworthy ; indeed Meibomius (Musici antiqui) accuses Kircher of having written it without consulting a single ancient Greek authority. His Phonurgia (Kempten, 1673), translated into German by Agathus Carione (apparently a notn de plume), with the title Neue Hall- und Thonkunst (Nijrdlingen, 1684), is an amplification of part of the Musurgia, and deals chiefly with acoustical instruments. In his Magnes, siue de arte magnetica (Rome, 1641) he gives all the songs and airs then in use to cure the bite of the tarantula. His Oedipus aegyptiacus (Rome, 1652-54) treats of the music contained in Egyptian hieroglyphics. (See J. E. Matthew's Literature of Music, p. 57.) F. G.