BECHER, JOHANN JOACHIM (1635-1682), German chemist, physician, scholar, and adventurer, was born at Spires in 1635. After a hard childhood and youth, in which study was difficult because of the necessity of supporting his mother and brothers, Becher began an extraordinary career in which the publi cation of learned works alternated with the development of enter prises of colonization and trade. His first book, an edition of Salzthal's Tractatus de lapide trismegisto, appeared in 1654, when he was 19, and was followed by a score of considerable works. At Munich he was suggesting to the Elector of Bavaria the estab lishment of colonies in South America and a monopoly of the cloth trade, until he was driven to flight by the anger of the merchants ; in 1666 he was in Vienna under the protection of Count Zinzendorf, and after an interval in Bavaria was again in Vienna proposing a Rhine-Danube canal and the opening up of trade with the Low Countries, and later employed in experiments for trans muting the Danube sand into gold. He fell into disgrace with Zinzendorf, fled to Holland and then to England, where he died in 1682. His ideas and experiments on the nature of minerals and other substances are set forth in his Physica Subterranea (Frank fort, 166g) ; an edition of this, published at Leipzig in 1703, con tains two supplements, Experimentum chymicum novum and Demonstratio Philosophica, arguing the truth and possibility of transmuting metals, Experimentum novum ac curiosum de minera arenaria perpetua, a paper on timepieces, and Specimen Beche rianuyn, a summary of his doctrines by Stahl.