Tycho Brahe, born Tyge Ottesen Brahe (December 14 1546 – October 24 1601), was a Danish nobleman famed for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical observations. Hailing from Scania, now part
of modern-day Sweden, Brahe was well known in his lifetime as an astrologer and
alchemist.
The Latinized name Tycho Brahe is usually pronounced [ˌtai.ko ˌbrɑ.hi] or [ˌtai.ko
ˌbrɑ.ə] in American English, and [ˌtʌɪ.kəʊ ˌbrɑː.hi] or [ˌtʌɪ.kəʊ ˌbrɑː.ə] in British English. The original Danish name Tyge Ottesen Brahe is pronounced in Modern Standard
Danish as [ˈtˢyː.y ˈʌ.d̥ə.sn̩
ˈb̥ʁɑː.ʊ].
Tycho Brahe was granted an estate on the island of Hven and the funding to build the
Uraniborg, an early research institute, where he
built large astronomical instruments and took many careful measurements. As an astronomer, Tycho worked to combine what he saw as
the geometrical benefits of the Copernican system
with the philosophical benefits of the Ptolemaic system into his own model of the
universe, the Tychonic system. From 1600 until his death
in 1601, he was assisted by Johannes Kepler, who would
later use Tycho's astronomical information to develop his own theories of astronomy. He is universally referred to as "Tycho"
rather than by his surname "Brahe", as was common in Scandinavia.
He is credited with the most accurate astronomical observations of his time, and the data were used by his assistant Kepler to
derive the laws of planetary motion. No one before Tycho had attempted
to make so many redundant observations, and the mathematical tools to take advantage of them had not yet been developed. He did
what others before him were unable or unwilling to do — to catalogue the planets and stars with enough accuracy so as to
determine whether the Ptolemaic or Copernican system was more valid in describing the heavens.
Life
Early years
Tycho Brahe was born Tyge Ottesen Brahe (de Knutstorp), adopting the Latinised form Tycho around age fifteen
(sometimes written Tÿcho). He is often misnamed Tycho de Brahe. He was born at his family's ancestral seat of
Knutstorp Castle, Denmark to Otte Brahe and Beate Bille. His
twin brother died before being baptized. (Tycho
wrote a Latin ode (Wittendorf 1994, p. 68) to his dead twin which was printed as his first publication in 1572). He also had two
sisters, one older (Kirstine Brahe) and one younger (Sophia
Brahe). Otte Brahe, Tycho's father, was a nobleman and an important figure in the
Danish King's court. His mother, Beate Bille, also came from an important family that had
produced leading churchmen and politicians. In his youth he lived at Hvedborg Manor,
Funen, Denmark with his uncle and attended Horne Church in nearby Horne.
Tycho later wrote that when he was around two, his uncle, Danish nobleman Jørgen Brahe,
"... without the knowledge of my parents took me away with him while I was in my earliest youth." Apparently this did not
lead to any disputes nor did his parents attempt to get him back. Tycho lived with his childless uncle and aunt, Jørgen Brahe and
Inger Oxe, in the Tostrup Castle until he was six years old.
Around 1552 his uncle was given the command of Vordingborg
Castle to which they moved, and where Tycho began a Latin education until he was 12 years old.
On April 19 1559, Tycho began his studies at the
University of Copenhagen. There, following the wishes of his uncle, he studied
law but also studied a variety of other subjects and became interested in astronomy. It was, however, the eclipse which occurred on
August 21 1560, particularly the fact that it had been
predicted, that so impressed him that he began to make his own studies of astronomy helped by some of the professors. He
purchased an ephemeris and books such as Sacrobosco's Tractatus de Sphaera, Apianus's
Cosmographia seu descriptio totius orbis and Regiomontanus's De triangulis
omnimodis.
I've studied all available charts of the planets and stars and none of them match the others. There are just as many
measurements and methods as there are astronomers and all of them disagree. What's needed is a long term project with the aim of
mapping the heavens conducted from a single location over a period of several years. — Tycho Brahe, 1563 (age 17).
Tycho realized that progress in the science of astronomy could be achieved not by occasional haphazard observations, but only
by systematic and rigorous observation, night after night, and by using instruments of the highest accuracy obtainable. He was
able to improve and enlarge the existing instruments, and construct entirely new ones. Tycho's naked
eye measurements of planetary parallax were accurate to the arcminute. His sister, Sophia, assisted Tycho in many of his measurements. These jealously guarded
measurements were "usurped" by Kepler following Tycho's death.[1] Tycho was the last major astronomer to work without the aid of a telescope, soon to be turned toward the sky by Galileo.
Tycho's nose
While a student, Tycho lost part of his nose in a duel with
rapiers with Manderup Parsbjerg, a fellow Danish nobleman. This
occurred in the Christmas season of 1566,
after a fair amount of drinking, while the just turned 20-year-old Tycho was studying at the University of Rostock in Germany. Attending a dance at a
professor's house, he quarreled with Parsbjerg. A subsequent duel (in the dark) resulted in Tycho losing the bridge of his nose.
A consequence of this was that Tycho developed an interest in medicine and alchemy. For the rest of his life, he was said to have worn a replacement made of silver and gold blended into a flesh tone, and used an adhesive balm to keep it attached. However, in 1901 Tycho's tomb was opened and
his remains were examined by medical experts. The nasal opening of the skull was rimmed with
green, a sign of exposure to copper, not silver or gold. Some historians have speculated that he
wore a number of different prosthetics for different occasions, noting that a
copper nose would have been more comfortable and less heavy than a precious metal one.
Death of his father
His foster father, uncle Jørgen Brahe, died in 1565 of pneumonia after rescuing Frederick II of Denmark from drowning. In April 1567, Tycho returned home from his travels and
his father wanted him to take up law, but Tycho was allowed to make trips to Rostock, then on to Augsburg (where he built a great
quadrant), Basel, and Freiburg. At the end of 1570 he was informed about his father's ill health, so he returned to Knudstrup,
where his father died on May 9 1571. Soon after, his other uncle
Steen Bille helped him build an observatory and alchemical laboratory at Herrevad Abbey.
Family life
In 1572, in Knudstrup, Tycho fell in love with Kirsten Jørgensdatter, a commoner whose father,
Pastor Jorgen Hansen, was the Lutheran clergyman of Knudstrup's village church. Under
Danish law, when a nobleman and a common woman lived together openly as
husband and wife, and she wore the keys to the household at her belt like any true wife, their
alliance became a binding morganatic marriage after three years. The husband
retained his noble status and privileges; the wife remained a commoner. Their children were legitimate in the eyes of the law,
but they were commoners like their mother and could not inherit their father's name, coat of
arms, or land property. (Skautrup 1941, pp. 24-5)
Kirsten Jørgensdatter gave birth to their first daughter, Kirstine (named after Tycho's late sister who died at 13) on
October 12, 1573. Together they had eight children, six of whom
lived to adulthood. In 1574, they moved to Copenhagen where their daughter Magdalene was born. Kirsten and Tycho lived together
for almost thirty years until Tycho's death.
Tycho's moose
Tycho was said to own one percent of the entire wealth of Denmark at one point in the 1580s
and he often held large social gatherings in his castle. He kept a dwarf named Jepp (whom Tycho believed was clairvoyant) as a court jester who sat under the table
during dinner. Pierre Gassendi wrote[2] that Tycho also had a tame moose, and that his mentor the Landgraf
Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel
asked whether there was an animal faster than a deer. Tycho replied, writing that there were none, but he could send his tame
moose. When Wilhelm replied he would accept one in exchange for a horse, Tycho replied with the
sad news that the moose had just died on a visit to entertain a nobleman at Landskrona.
Apparently during dinner the moose had drunk a lot of beer, fallen down the stairs, and died: why the moose was indoors was not
specified.[3]
Death
Tycho died on October 24 1601, eleven days after suddenly
becoming very ill during a banquet. He was ill for eleven days, and toward the end of his illness he is said to have told Kepler
"Ne frustra vixisse videar!", "Let me not seem to have lived in vain”.[4][5] For hundreds of years, the
general belief was that he had strained his bladder. It had been said that to leave the
banquet before it concluded would be the height of bad manners, and so he remained, and that his bladder, stretched to its limit,
developed an infection which he later died of. This theory was supported by Kepler's first-hand account.
Recent investigations have suggested that Tycho did not die from urinary problems but instead from mercury poisoning: extremely toxic levels of it have been found in his hair and hair-roots. Tycho may
have poisoned himself by imbibing some medicine containing unintentional mercuric
chloride impurities, or may have been poisoned.[6]
According to a 2005 book by Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder, there is substantial circumstantial evidence that Kepler murdered Brahe;
they argue that Kepler had the means, motive, and opportunity, and stole Tycho's data on his death.[7] According to the Gilders, they find it "unlikely"[7] Tycho could have poisoned himself since he was an
alchemist known to be familiar with the toxicity of different mercury compounds.
Tycho Brahe's body is currently interred in a tomb in the Church of Our
Lady in front of Týn near Old Town Square near the Astronomical Clock in Prague.
Career: observing the heavens
Supernova
On November 11, 1572, Tycho observed (from Herrevad Abbey) a very bright star which unexpectedly appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia, now named SN 1572. Since it had been maintained
since antiquity that the world beyond the orbit of the moon, i.e. that of the fixed
stars, was eternal and unchangeable (a fundamental axiom of the Aristotelian world view:
celestial immutability), other observers held that the phenomenon was something in the Earth's atmosphere. Tycho, however,
observed that the parallax of the object did not change from night to night, suggesting that
the object was far away. Tycho argued that a nearby object should appear to shift its position with respect to the background. He
published a small book, De Stella Nova (1573), thereby coining the term nova for a "new" star (we now know that Tycho's star in Cassiopeia was a supernova 7500 light years from earth). This discovery was decisive for
his choice of astronomy as a profession. Tycho was strongly critical of those who dismissed the implications of the astronomical
appearance, writing in the preface to De Stella Nova: "O crassa ingenia. O caecos coeli spectatores" ("Oh thick wits. Oh
blind watchers of the sky").
Tycho's discovery was the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "Al Aaraaf."[citation needed] In 1998, Sky &
Telescope magazine published an article by Donald W. Olson, Marilynn S. Olson and Russell L. Doescher arguing, in
part, that Tycho's supernova was also the same "star that's westward from the pole" in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Heliocentrism
In this depiction of the Tychonic system, the objects on blue orbits (the moon and the sun) rotate around the earth. The objects
on orange orbits (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) rotate around the sun. Around all is sphere of fixed stars.
Kepler tried, but was unable, to persuade Tycho to adopt the heliocentric model of the
solar system. Tycho believed in a modified geocentric
model known as the Tychonic system, for the same reasons that he argued that the
supernova of 1572 was not near the Earth. He argued that if the Earth were in motion, then nearby stars should appear to shift their positions with respect to background stars. In fact,
this effect of parallax does exist; but it could not be observed with the naked eye, or even
with the telescopes of the next two hundred years, because even the nearest stars are much more distant than most astronomers of
the time believed possible. The Tychonic system is very similar to the Copernican one, except that it has a static earth instead
of a static sun.
In the years following Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus in 1610, which made the Ptolemaic system
intractable, the Tychonic system became the major competitor with Copernicanism, and was adopted by the Roman Catholic Church for many years as its official astronomical conception of the universe.
Uraniborg, Stjerneborg, and Benátky nad Jizerou
Watercolor plan of Uraniborg
King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, impressed with Tycho's 1572 observations, financed the
construction of two observatories for Tycho on the island of Hven in Oresund. These were Uraniborg and Stjerneborg. Uraniborg also had a laboratory for his alchemical
experiments.
Because Tycho disagreed with Christian IV, the new king of his country, he
left Hven in 1597 and moved to Prague in 1599. Sponsored by Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, he built a new observatory in a castle in Benátky nad Jizerou, 50 km from Prague, and he worked there for one year. The emperor then had him
move back to Prague, where he stayed until his death. Besides the emperor himself, he was also financially supported by several
nobles, including Oldrich Desiderius Pruskowsky von Pruskow, to whom he dedicated his famous volume, the "Mechanica."
In return for their support, Tycho's duties included preparing astrological charts and
predictions for his patrons on events such as births, weather forecasting, and providing
astrological interpretations of significant astronomical events such as the comet
of 1577 and the supernova of 1572.
Astronomy
Mural quadrant (Tycho Brahe 1598)
Danish stamp of
1946 featuring Tycho Brahe.
Tycho was the preeminent observational astronomer of the pre-telescopic period, and his observations of stellar and planetary positions achieved unparalleled accuracy for their time. For
example, Tycho measured Earth's axial tilt as 23 degrees and 31.5 minutes, which he claimed
to be more accurate than Copernicus by 3.5 minutes. After his death, his records of the motion of the planet Mars enabled Kepler to discover the laws of planetary
motion, which provided powerful support for the Copernican heliocentric
theory of the solar system.
Tycho himself was not a Copernican, but proposed a system in which the Sun orbited the
Earth while the other planets orbited the Sun. His
system provided a safe position for astronomers who were dissatisfied with older models but were reluctant to accept the Earth's
motion. It gained a considerable following after 1616 when Rome decided officially that the
heliocentric model was contrary to both philosophy and Scripture, and could be discussed only as a computational convenience that
had no connection to fact. His system also offered a major innovation: while both the geocentric model and the heliocentric model
as set forth by Copernicus relied on the idea of transparent rotating crystalline spheres to carry the planets in their orbits,
Tycho eliminated the spheres entirely.
He was aware that a star observed near the horizon appears with a greater altitude than the
real one, due to atmospheric refraction, and he worked out tables for the correction of this
source of error.
To perform the huge number of products needed to produce much of his astronomical data, Tycho relied heavily on the then-new
technique of prosthaphaeresis, an algorithm for approximating products based on
trigonometric identities that predated logarithms.
Astrology
Like the fifteenth century astronomer
Regiomontanus, Tycho Brahe appears to have accepted astrological prognostications on the principle that the heavenly bodies
undoubtedly influenced (yet did not determine) terrestrial events, but expressed
skepticism about the multiplicity of interpretative
schemes, and increasingly preferred to work on establishing a sound mathematical
astronomy. Two early tracts, one entitled Against Astrologers for
Astrology, and one on a new method of dividing the sky into astrological houses, were never published and are now lost.
Tycho also worked in the area of weather prediction, produced astrological interpretations of the supernova of 1572 and the comet of 1577, and furnished his patrons Frederick II
and Rudolph II with nativities and
other predictions (thereby strengthening the ties between patron and client by demonstrating value). An astrological world view was fundamental to Tycho's entire philosophy of nature. His interest in alchemy, particularly the
medical alchemy associated with Paracelsus, was almost as
long-standing as his study of astrology and astronomy simultaneously, and
Uraniborg was constructed as both observatory and
laboratory.
In an introductory oration to the course of lectures he gave in Copenhagen in 1574, Tycho defended astrology
on the grounds of correspondences between the heavenly bodies, terrestrial substances (metals, stones etc.) and bodily
organs (medical astrology). He was later to
emphasise the importance of studying alchemy and astrology
together with a pair of emblems bearing the mottoes: Despiciendo suspicio ("By looking down I see upward") and
Suspiciendo despicio ("By looking up I see downward"). As several scholars have now argued, Tycho's commitment to a
relationship between macrocosm and microcosm even played a role in his rejection
of Copernicanism and his construction of a third world-system.
Bibliography
References
- Brahe, Tycho. Tychonis Brahe Dani Opera Omnia (in Latin). Vol 1-15. 1913-1929. Edited by J.L.E. Dreyer.
- Skautrup, Peter, 1941 Den jyske lov: Text med oversattelse og ordbog. Aarhus: Universitets-forlag.
- Wittendorff, Alex. 1994. Tyge Brahe. Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gad.
- Strange Cases from the Files
of Astronomical Sociology. University of Notre Dame. Retrieved on 31 March, 2005.
- Olson, Donald W.; Olson, Marilynn S.; Doescher, Russell L., "The Stars of Hamlet," Sky & Telescope
(November 1998)
- R. Cowen (1999). "Danish astronomer argues for a changing cosmos" (in English). Science News
156 (25 & 26). Retrieved on 2006-09-25.
- Brahe, Tycho.
'Astronomiæ instauratæ mechanica', 1598 European Digital Library Treasure
Further reading
- John Robert Christianson: On Tycho's Island: Tycho Brahe, science, and culture in the sixteenth century. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-521-65081-X
- Victor E. Thoren: The Lord of Uraniborg: a biography of Tycho Brahe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990 ISBN
0-521-35158-8
- Kitty Ferguson: The nobleman and his housedog: Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler: the strange partnership that
revolutionised science. London: Review, 2002 ISBN 0-7472-7022-8 (published in the US as: Tycho & Kepler: the unlikely
partnership that forever changed our understanding of the heavens. New York: Walker, 2002 ISBN 0-8027-1390-4)
- Joshua Gilder and Anne-Lee Gilder Heavenly intrigue. New York: Doubleday, 2004 ISBN 0-385-50844-1
- Arthur Koestler: "The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe". Hutchinson, 1959; reprinted in
Arkana, 1989
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Named after Tycho
Geography
Things
Literature
- Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott (Tycho Brahe's Path to God) by Max Brod, 1916
- Tycho Brahe, pseudonym of Jerry Holkins and a character from the popular webcomic
Penny Arcade
- Tycho Tithonus, the main character in William Sleator's 1981 book The Green Futures of Tycho
- Tycho Brahe is mentioned in the book "The Golem's Eye", by Jonathan Stroud, as Bartimaeus' erstwhile master. Bartimaeus
claims to have made Tycho's false nose.
Music
Film
Gaming
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