Tycho Brahe: Past and Future Research

Tychonis Brahei, Equitis Dani, Astronomorum Coryphaei, Vita. Editio secunda, auctior & correctior [from the Paris edition of 1654] (The Hague, 1655).

Tycho Brahe: A picture of scientific life and work in the sixteenth century (Edinburgh, 1890, reprinted New York, 1963).

Dreyer did not publish his epochal History of the planetary systems from Tholes to Kepler at Cambridge until 1905.

Vols vi-xiv and parts of vols i-v of Tychonis Brahe opera omnia , ed. Dreyer J. L. E. (15 vols, Copenhagen, 1913–29). See also recent finds printed by Norlind ( Tycho Brahe: En levnadsteckning (Lund, 1970), 366–82), and Thoren and Christianson , “An ‘unpublished’ version of Tycho Brahe's lunar theory” and “Addenda to Tychonis Brahe Opera Omnia tomus XIV” (Centaurus, xvi (1972), 203–47).

To keep the record straight, it is worth stating that much of the preliminary groundwork was done in the last part of the nineteenth century by F. R. Friis.

The results of Lauritz Nielsen (Dansk Bibliografi 1551–1600 (Copenhagen, 1931–33)), with numerous additions by Norlind, are presented in Norlind, op. cit., 41–45, 122–7, 232–7, and 286–93.

“The life and work of the Tübingen astronomer Michael Maestlin(1550–1631)”, University of Toronto doctoral dissertation by Richard Jarrell, 1971.

“The Prutenic Tables of Erasmus Reinhold” (in progress at Yale University) by Henderson Janice A.

“Johannes Kepler's adoption of the Copernican hypothesis”, University of Michigan doctoral dissertation by Westman Robert S. , 1971.

Currently under investigation by Kristian-Peder Moesgaard, at the History of Science Department, University of Aarhus, Denmark.

A beginning of the kind of general survey of the period that needs to be done, has been made by Christine Jones (Schofield) in a Cambridge dissertation (1964) entitled “The geoheliocentric planetary system: Its development and influence in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”.

Tycho Brahe's discussion of his instruments and scientific work (Copenhagen, 1946).

Norlind Wilhelm , Tycho Brahe. Mannen och verket. Efter Gassendi övers. med kommentar (Lund, 1951). This work is especially strong in its bibliography.

See above, ref. 4. For reviews, see Journal for the history of astronomy, ii (1971), 205–7 and Isis, lxii (1971), 545–6.

For a listing of the amateur efforts to commemorate Tycho, see the Astronomischer Jahresbericht (Berlin), xlvii (1947), 10–11.

Ed. Gillispie C. C. , ii (New York, 1970), 401–16.

For a discussion of Gassendi's sources, see Christianson's John “Tycho Brahe's facts of life” in Fund Og Forskning i Det Kongelige Biblioteks samlinger, xvii (Copenhagen, 1970).

Norlind (op. cit.) has incorporated these data into Chap. I of his account.

See especially Beckett F. and Christensen C. , Uraniborg og Stjaerneborg (Copenhagen, 1921); and Nicolaisen N. A. Møller , Tycho Brahe's papirmølle paa Hven … (Copenhagen, 1946).

See Matiegka Heinrich , Bericht über die Untersuchung der Gebeine Tycho Brahes (Prague, 1901).

Documented by Dreyer, Tycho Brahe, 216–37.

ibid., 252–3.

This theme is being developed for publication by John Christianson.

Cited by Norlind on pp. 250–1.

See Christianson's John “Cloister and observatory. Herrevad Abbey and Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg”, University of Minnesota doctoral dissertation, 1964.

See Thoren Victor E. , “New light on Tycho's instruments”, Journal for the history of astronomy, iv (1973), 25–45.

“Man hat den Eindruck, dass Instrumente gebaut wurden, nur um Arbeit zu schaffen …”, Repsold J. A. , Zur Geschichte der Astronomischen Messwerkzeuge von Purbach bis Reichenbach 1450 bis 1830 (Leipzig, 1908), 29.

For citations to the relevant literature, and an extended discussion of Tycho's accuracy, see Dreyer , Tycho Brahe, 251–8.

Tupman G. L. , “A comparison of Tycho Brahe's meridian observations of the Sun with Leverrier's solar tables”, The observatory, xxiii (1900), 132–5, 165–71.

Dreyer , Tycho Brahe, 306.

Thoren Victor E. , “Tycho Brahe on the lunar theory”, Indiana University doctoral dissertation, 1965. 32; Thoren Victor E. , “An early instance of deductive discovery. Tycho Brahe's lunar theory”, Isis, lviii (1967), 19–36.

Thoren Victor E. , “Tycho Brahe's discovery of the Variation”, Centaurus, xii (1967), 151–66.

Maeyama Y. , “The historical development of solar theories in late sixteenth and seventeenth century”, to be published in Vistas in astronomy.

On the equivalence, see Neugebauer O. , “On the planetary theory of Copernicus”, Vistas in astronomy, x (1968), 89–103.

Hellman C. D. , The comet of 1577: Its place in the history of astronomy (New York, 1944).

For a listing of the enormous quantity of technical instruments, etc., that have survived from the period, see Zinner's Ernst Deutsche und Niederländische Astronomische Instrumente des 11.-18. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1956).

The issue was not raised at all by J. Ruffner in his extensive discussion of “The background and early development of Newton's theory of comets”, Indiana University doctoral dissertation, 1966. Westman (see above, ref. 9) mentions Maestlin's oversight, but offers no explanation for it.

For a lone dissent as to the actuality of the influence of the comet on Tycho's world system, see Kelly's M. S. Sister “Celestial motors: 1543–1632”, University of Oklahoma doctoral dissertation, 1964, 43–52.

“Tycho Brahe et Albumasar”, in La science au XVI^e siècle (Paris, 1960).

The facts are scattered through Chapters 6, 8, 9 of his De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis … of 1588.

Donahue W. H. , “The dissolution of the heavenly spheres 1595–1650”, University of Cambridge doctoral dissertation, 1972.

As recently as 1960, Professors Hall A. R. and Marie Boas felt the necessity of making an issue of the virtues and impact of Tycho's system: See “Tycho Brahe's system of the world” in Occasional notes of the Royal Astronomical Society, iii (1959), 252–63.

“Le commentaire inedit d'Erasme Reinhold sur le ‘De revolutionibus’ de Nicolas Copernicus”, La science au seizième siècle (Paris, 1960), 170–7.

See ref. 11, and an extract published in the British journal for the history of science, “The geoheliocentric mathematical hypothesis in sixteenth-century planetary theory”, ii (1965), 291–6.

Dreyer suspected that the letter might be fictitious: History of planetary systems …. 363.

In so far as anything published in Swedish in Cassiopeia can be said to be prominent: See “Tycho Brahes världssystem hur det tillkom och utformades” (1944), 55–75.

One of the prime virtues of the Copernican theory was that it placed the planetary orbits by interpreting the size of the planet's Ptolemaic epicycle as an indication of its distance from earth. Since the apparent size of the epicycle was empirically determined, any departure from the distance assumed by Copernicus would have required a radically different type of orbit than that used by Copernicus (and Tycho).

The fact that Tycho compared the result with observations makes it extremely unlikely that the calculation was made much in advance of the stated date: For the figure and the calculations, see Opera, v, 284–8.

As this article goes to press, Owen Gingerich reports the discovery of Tycho's copy of the first edition of De revolutionibus… in the Vatican Library, containing a thirty page manuscript documenting the evolution of Tycho's world system. Expositions of the material and an edition of the document are forthcoming in Scientific American (December 1973) and Centaurus, respectively.

Tycho Brahe, 101.

“Gassendi, Ole Worm and the Tychonic tradition”, unpublished paper delivered to the annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, at the University of Kentucky, 7 May 1971.

“Bidrag til Tyge Brahes Historia”, by Rördam H. J. , Danske Magazin, fourth series ii, 16–34.

Norlind , Tycho Brahe, 87.

ibid., 56–60. Studnicka's F. J. Bericht über die astrologischen Studien des Reformators der beobachtenden Astronomie, Tycho Brahe (Prague, 1901) is not as informative as its title suggests.

For something of an exception to this statement, see Figala Karin , “Tycho Brahes Elexier”, Annals of science, xxviii (1972), 139–76.

Opera, v, 145, 118.

Lindroth Sten , Paracelsismen i Sverige till 1600-talets mitt (Upsala, 1943).

British journal for the history of science, i (1963), 295–324.

See ref. 11.

Moesgaard Kristian Peder , “The reception of Copernicanism in Denmark”, in press.

Op. cit. (ref. 51).

Machina coelestis (Dantzig, 1673).

Wilson Curtis A. , “From Kepler's Laws, so-called, to universal gravitation: Empirical factors”, Archive for history of exact sciences, vi (1970), 89–170, p. 118.

The Astronomia Danica of 1622 was universally regarded as the testament of Tycho, and was reprinted in 1640 and 1663.