Georg Joachim Rheticus

Georg Joachim von Lauchen , called Rheticus (" originating in Rhétie" , the Rhétie Roman corresponding about to current the the Tyrol) is a Astronome and Mathématicien Autrichien, born with Feldkirch (Vorarlberg) the February 15th 1514, died with Kassa (Hungary) the December 4th 1574. It passed to the posterity as that which decided (1541-1543) Copernic to publish its heliocentric theory.

Biography

Born from an easy family of the Austrian Tyrol, Rheticus travelled child to Italy. Then he studied in the Université S of Zurich, of Wittenberg (where he became protected from Melanchthon), Nuremberg and Göttingen. At 22 years, Melanchthon entrusted to him the pulpits of Mathematics and Astronomy of the any young person university Lutheran of Wittenberg. Informed of the ideas of Copernic on the heliocentrism, it obtained the authorization of its university to go to Frauenburg to meet Copernic, in spite of the disapproval of Luther, and in spite of the persecution of the bishop of Warmie, Dantiscus, against the Lutherans.

Rheticus explained later (1543) why it had wished to meet Copernic because it had just been appointed professor of astronomy at the university of Nuremberg and that he felt by too ignoramus of this discipline.

Copernic, dominates præceptor

Arrived at Frauenburg at the summer 1539, Rheticus spent two years there. Copernic had then written only a Commentariolus (between 1510 and 1514, according to Koyré) on its cosmological assumptions , booklet which had circulated only in one very small number of specimens. According to Kœstler, Copernic felt that it would need, considering its advanced age (66 years), of a young disciple to help it to publish a complete treaty on its system , but before relying on Rheticus, it lengthily consulted his old friend, the bishop of Ermland, Tiedemann Giese (1480-1550). It also seems that Copernic wished to be limited to publish its tables of position of planets, but without clarifying the assumption on which they were built.

Finally, Rheticus, helped by Giese, obtained from Copernic the authorization to evoke in a Narratio Prima the theory of an anonymity dominus præceptor , narration in which Copernic would be named like the scientist Doctor Nicolas de Thorn : this little book, written in an enthusiastic style and almost idolâtre (the præceptor is compared with Atlas carrying the Earth on its shoulders), read again attentively by Copernic, was written in September 1539 and appeared with Dantzig in 1540.

While the Narratio made known the ideas of Copernic, Rheticus took again its courses in Nuremberg from March in July 1540. When it turned over to Frauenburg, Copernic finally agree to let it recopy its manuscript of 424 pages, Of revolutionibus orbium cœlestium . In May 1542, Rheticus managed to convince the printer Johann Petreius of Nuremberg to print the treaty of Copernic, as its own trigonometrical tables which would form an appendix of it.

It is in these tables of Joachim Rheticus that one finds for the first time the use of the secant S in Trigonométrie.

Reversal

With died of Copernic (1543), Rheticus gave up all brutally Prosélytisme for the theory of its Master. The reason of this reversal is discussed, and perhaps never will be completely cleared up. According to a tradition Anticlerical, Rheticus would have sought to flee persecutions of the Church, holding of the Géocentrisme. But Kœstler raises another assumption: the dedication of De Revolutionibus with the pope Paul III, in which Copernic explains the genesis of its book, completely leaves in the shade the contribution of Rheticus. This behavior, if it can be explained by the fact that Rheticus was Protestant, would have rejected the young disciple.

As from this moment, Rheticus carries out an unstable, punctuated life by scandals and sex cases.

From 1543 to 1545, he is professor with Leipzig, then share abruptly for Italy: the university recalls it by twice to its duties of teacher, in vain (the interested party calls upon health issues), but it returns all the same in 1548. There, it publishes astronomical éphémérides (1550). Pressed by several colleagues to correct the miscalculations of the first edition of the Of revolutionibus , Rheticus professes in its Éphémérides the opinion that only the system of Ptolémée should be taught in Germany.

End of a career

In 1550, shown Sodomy, it precipitately leaves Leipzig and apparently the Saint Empire, although in 1554 one prints with Nuremberg his treaty of Trigonométrie: Canon doctrinæ triangulórum (1554), a work which is accompanied by the most precise tables of the century (15 significant figures, for all the angles by 10 second old arcs of opening).

In 1557, Rheticus reappears with Cracow and, claiming disciple of Copernic now, makes set up a Obélisque 15 meters height to measure the position of the stars. Again solicited to republish work of Copernic, it is concealed. He saw from now on primarily his practice of doctor.

In 1568, he writes with Pierre of Ramée about a project of astronomical observatory “founded on the principle of the Egyptian obelisks”. He earns his living as a doctor of court, in Poland then finally in Hungary. The year of its death, he works with a student, Valentine Othon, with new trigonometrical tables, the Opus Palatinum of triangulis , which will be published only in 1596.

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