Другое : Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe
Born: 14 Dec 1546 in Knudstrup, Denmark
Died: 24 Oct 1601 in Prague, Bohemia (now Czech
Republic)
Tycho Brahe was given the name Tyge by his parents
Beate Bille and Otte Brahe. He is now known as "Tycho" since that is
the Latinised version of his name that he adopted when he was about fifteen
years old. For simplicity we shall use the name Tycho throughout this
biography. Otte Brahe, Tycho's father, was from the Danish nobility and was an
important man among the Danish King's closest group of supporters. Beate Bille,
Tycho's mother, also came from an important family which had produced leading
churchmen and politicians. Tycho was one of twin sons, but his twin died
shortly after birth. His parents had one older daughter but Tycho was their
eldest son.
Here is a
picture of his birthplace.
A strange episode occurred when Tycho was two years
old. His uncle, Jorgen Brahe (in Tycho's own words, see for example):-
... without the knowledge of my parents took me away
with him while I was in my earliest youth.
It was a strange episode since it did not appear to
cause any family disputes nor did his parents try to take him back. Jorgen
Brahe and his wife Inger Oxe had no children of their own, and they acted as
foster parents to Tycho until Jorgen's death. Jorgen Brahe, like his brother
Otte Brahe, was a leading Danish noble while Inger Oxe was the sister of Peder
Oxe who was a member of the Rigsraads, the governing council consisting of 20
advisors to the King. In fact Tycho benefited most on the educational side from
his foster mother Inger Oxe who had scholarly interests as did other members of
her family, while the Brahes and the Billes had little time for scholarly pursuits.
Jorgen Brahe commanded Tostrup Castle, and it was in
that castle that Tycho lived from the time he was taken by Jorgen until he was
six years old. We should not give the impression that he did not travel during
this time, for his parents had many administrative duties which took them away
and it is likely that Tycho sometimes went with one of them. In 1552 Jorgen was
given the command of Vordingborg Castle, which was a promotion to a more
important role. About a year after Tycho moved to Vordingborg with his foster
parents he began to attend school, almost certainly attending that attached to
the local cathedral. Although Tycho's father Otte considered learning Latin a
waste of time, his foster parents were much keener that he should receive this type
of education. Tycho attended this school until he was twelve years old, then
began his university studies.
On 19 April 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 21 August 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' Cosmographia seu descriptio totis orbisi and Regiomontanus' De triangulis omnimodis.
His foster parents decided that he should gain experience
abroad and in February 1562 he set off with a travelling companion to go to the
University of Leipzig. Astronomy was not officially part of his studies, these
were classical languages and culture, but he had bought his astronomy books
with him together with Dürer's
constellation maps. He began making observations and by August 1563, while
still at the University of Leipzig, he began to keep a record of these
observations. The second observation he recorded was a conjunction of Jupiter
and Saturn which proved significant for Tycho's subsequent career. Neither
tables based on Copernicus nor on Ptolemy gave the correct date for the
conjunction, Ptolemy's being out by
nearly a month and even Copernicus'
being out by days. Tycho, with the confidence of someone not yet seventeen,
thought he could do better - and he later proved himself to be right!
Tycho now studied astronomy with Bartholomew Schultz
at Leibzig who taught him some tricks to obtain more accurate observations. He
knew that accurate observations required good instruments and he began to
acquire them. Tycho returned home in May 1565 and in the following month his
uncle Jorgen gave his life in rescuing the King. His father, who now commanded
Helsingborg Castle, and mother assumed responsibility for the young man who was
still under eighteen. In 1566 he was off on his travels again, visiting first
the university in Wittenberg and then that in Rostock. While in Rostock he was
involved in an argument with another Danish student and in the resulting duel
Tycho had part of his nose cut off. A consequence of this was that Tycho
developed an interest in medicine and alchemy.
After his return home in April 1567 he had an
artificial nose made from silver and gold. He was, however, disfigured for life
and his portraits show the disfigurement which was almost certainly worse than
what the artists portrayed. Tycho's father was keen that he should quickly take
up a political career but somehow Tycho persuaded his father to let him make
another trip abroad. He first revisited Rostock, then went to Basel, Freiburg,
and Augsburg. Tycho had been working on improved instruments for observing for
a while, but when in Augsburg he designed some of his own and managed to obtain
a patron to underwrite the cost of a major new instrument. In about a month he
had a huge quadrant constructed and erected in the estate of his patron outside
the city. It was very accurate but was so massive that it required many
servants to align it so only one observation could be made each night.
Peter Ramus was also on a visit to
Germany and while in Augsburg he learnt of Tycho's great quadrant leading to
meetings at which the two engaged in deep astronomical discussions. Tycho began
constructing another instrument, this time a large celestial globe made from
wood.
Receiving word that his father was ill, Tycho returned
home during the last few days of 1570. His father died in May 1571 and soon
after, with the help of his uncle Steen Bille, Tycho began constructing an
observatory in Herrevad Abbey. They also built an alchemy laboratory there
since alchemy was becoming a major interest for Tycho. In 1572 he met Kirsten
Jorgensdatter, a girl from his home town of Knudstrup, but since she was a
commoner and he was a noble, they could not marry legally. Kirsten lived with
him, however, as his common law wife. The year 1572 was significant for Tycho
in another way as described by Field :-
On 11 November 1572, he emerged into the dark of the
early evening, after a long stint of alchemical experimentation, and his first
glance at the sky showed him an extra star in the constellation of Cassiopeia,
almost directly overhead. He instantly summoned his chemical assistant to
confirm that the star really was there. He was not the first to see the new star
(a supernova) but his observations of it (published in 1574) did much to prove
beyond reasonable doubt that the star really belonged to the firmament and was
not merely a local phenomenon in the sublunary world (as comets were generally
believed to be). The star is now usually known as 'Tycho's supernova'. It
turned Tycho's interest back to astronomy.
Beginning in September 1574 Tycho lectured on
astronomy at the University of Copenhagen but gave up in the following spring
when he received an annual income from his father's estate. He set off on
another trip abroad, first visiting Kassel. The Landgraf Wilhelm IV of
Hessen-Kassel had founded an observatory at Kassel about 15 years earlier and
Tycho was very impressed by the methods used there. The design of his own
observatory would be influence by that at Kassel and Tycho corresponded
frequently with the Landgraf; see for
more details of their relationship and correspondence.
Leaving Kassel, Tycho visited Frankfurt, Basel and
finally Venice before returning to Denmark by the end of 1575. By this time he
had made a decision to leave Denmark and to settle in Basel, but King Frederick
of Denmark was not going to lose his most eminent scientist easily so he made
offers to Tycho to entice him to set up an observatory in Denmark. After some
offers which Tycho did not find attractive, the King offered Tycho the island
of Hven (called today Ven) :-
With financial help from the King of Denmark, he went
on to set up a purpose-built observatory, on the island of Hven in Copenhagen
Sound. The observatory, called Uraniborg, was equipped with exceptionally large
and accurate instruments (and with an alchemical laboratory in its basement).
At Uraniborg Tycho made twenty years' worth of astronomical observations.
Here is Tycho's drawing of the main building at Uraniborg, taken from his Astronomiae
instauratae mechanica (1598). Here is his
plan of the gardens, from the same work, with the main building in the
centre and servants' quarters, a printing studio, and other buildings just
inside the outer walls. We should note that Tycho's design was influenced by
buildings he had seen in Venice, and was also constructed in a highly
geometrical form.
One of the most exciting astronomical events which
Tycho observed from Uraniborg was a comet which he first spotted on 13 November
1577. He published his account in De mundi oetherei recentioribus phoenomis
(1588) where he draws cosmological conclusions from the fact that his
measurements show that the comet is not closer to Earth than the Moon,
contradicting Aristotle's model of the
cosmos. From his observations Tycho was able to show that the comet was
certainly further away than Venus.
In 1584, with the observatory of Uraniborg now too
small to house all his instruments, Tycho built a second one named Stjerneborg
adjacent to Uraniborg. This was the time when Tycho was most active in
producing major new instruments. Thoren writes :-
Because of the number and variety of instruments made
and described by Tycho, previous commentators have assumed that he made
instruments for the sheer sake of keeping his instrument-makers busy. In fact,
however, their construction can be traced in his logs and rationalized as
several series of experiments which only produced his major instruments in the
mid-1580's. The ten-year process had considerable consequences for progress of
Tycho's theoretical work during his life. It has also obscured historical
understanding of the accuracy of his instruments.
Maeyama notes in :-
Tycho's marvellous agreement between the description
and practice of observations.
Wesley, in and
, makes a careful study of the accuracy of Tycho's observations. Swerdlow,
reviewing writes:-
The results of the study are interesting, and speak
well for the accuracy of Tycho's instruments. Those tested are the mural
quadrant, revolving wooden quadrant, revolving steel quadrant, astronomical
sextant, and equatorial armillary, the last measuring declinations directly.
Aside from occasional periods when one or another instrument was distinctly out
of adjustment - as, by the way, only a study of this kind can show - the
observations have errors falling mostly between about 0.5' and 1.0', that is,
about the accuracy of the standard used for comparison. Thus, as was also the
case in the earlier study of fixed stars,
Kepler's belief that Tycho's observations could be trusted to better
than two minutes is amply confirmed.
Among his many discoveries Tycho found that the
obliquity of the ecliptic had decreased since the time of Ptolemy but, as explained in , he obtained
an incorrect value due to errors by
Ptolemy.
Tycho is perhaps best known today for his theory of
the solar system which is based on a stationary Earth round which the Moon and
Sun revolve. The other planets, according to Tycho's theory, revolve round the
Sun. In fact in his younger days Tycho had been convinced by Copernicus' Sun centred model but his firm
belief that theory must be supported by experimental evidence led him away. The
problem was, of course, that in the Sun centred model of Copernicus a parallax shift should be
observed but despite his attempts to measure such a shift, Tycho could detect
none. There were two possibilities to explain this: either the Earth was fixed,
or the scale of the universe was unbelievably large. We know today that it is
the second of these which is true, and that the scale is such that Tycho would
have had no hope in measuring parallax with his instruments. The first
measurement of the parallax of a star was in 1838 by Bessel who found 0.3" for the parallax of 61 Cygni. Despite
the quality of Tycho's measurements, this value in about 100 times smaller that
Tycho's observational errors. In fact Tycho was not the first to propose the
Earth centred model with the planets rotating round the Sun for Erasmus
Reinhold had done so a few years earlier. However Rosen in argues convincingly that Tycho did not know
of Reinhold's theory.
King Frederick died in April 1588 and, his son
Christian (who became King Christian IV) still being a child, a regent was
appointed. Support for Tycho continued however, and he presented a scheme to
the Rigsraads to allow his children to inherit Uraniborg. Six of his eight
children had lived. He had two sons; Tycho, born in 1581, and Georg in 1583. He
also had four daughters; Kirsten born in 1573, Magdalene in 1574, Elizabeth in
1579, and Cecolie in 1582. Because Kirsten was Tycho's common law wife, their children
could not inherit. Tycho, however, presented a patent which gave Uraniborg
something like university status, and the director something like the status of
the head of a university. It also stated that succession to the headship would
give preference to "Tycho Brahe's own". Perhaps surprisingly, since
the state was attempting to stop the acceptance of common law wives, Tycho's
patent was accepted, a sure sign of the high esteem in which he was held (and
perhaps also due to many family and friends being on the Rigsraads).
In his younger days Tycho had been a fair man in his
dealings with others. Although he had treated the inhabitants of Hven badly by
modern standards, and also in their eyes, it was usual for a lord at this time
to treat his subjects harshly. However in the 1590s Tycho's nature seemed to
change and his treatment both of the inhabitants of Hven and of his student
helpers at Uraniborg became unreasonable. He always thought a lot of himself
and perhaps by this stage his view of his own importance (he saw himself as the
natural successor to Hipparchus
and Ptolemy, a far more important
person than a King) had rather turned his head. Negotiations over the marriage
of his daughter Magdalene to Gellius, who had been an assistant at Uraniborg for
five years, fell apart and caused Tycho extreme grief and family upset. He fell
out with the young King Christian by not repairing the Chapel of the Magi at
Roskilde, where Christian's father Frederick was buried, despite it being on an
estate which provided Tycho with a substantial income. Christian made it clear
that the promise Tycho had been given that Uraniborg would continue under the
direction of his children no longer held.
Tycho closed down his observatory on Hven in 1597 (the
last recorded observation is on 15 March that year), and moved to Copenhagen.
However, things did not go well for him there and he left Denmark with his
family and his instruments to seek support and find somewhere to continue his
work :-
In 1599 he was appointed Imperial Mathematician to the
Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, in Prague. Johannes Kepler joined him as an assistant, to help with mathematical
calculations. Tycho intended that this work should prove the truth of his cosmological
model, in which the Earth (with the Moon in orbit around it) was at rest in the
centre of the Universe and the Sun went round the Earth (all other planets
being in orbit about the Sun and thus carried round with it).
Tycho began observing again in Prague. He received
support from Rudolph for Kepler and
himself to compile a new set of astronomical tables based on Tycho's recorded
observations over 38 years. These would be called the Rudolphine Tables as a
tribute to their sponsor. However, Tycho died eleven days after dining at the
palace of Peter Vok Ursinus Rozmberk as a result of adhering to the etiquette
of the day and refusing to leave the dinner table before his host. Kepler describes his death (see for
example):-
Holding his urine longer than was his habit, Brahe
remained seated. Although he drank a little overgenerously and experienced
pressure on his bladder, he felt less concerned for his state of health than
for etiquette. By the time he returned home he could not urinate any more.
Finally, with the most excruciating pain, he barely passed some urine, but yet
it was blocked. Uninterrupted insomnia followed; intestinal fever; and little
by little delirium. ... During his last night, through the delirium in which
everything was very pleasant, like a composer creating a song, Brahe these
words over and over again: "Let me not seem to have lived in vain."
Field writes :-
When Tycho died,
Kepler succeeded him as Imperial Mathematician. Tycho's observations of
planetary positions, which were made using instruments with open sights (a
telescope was not used for astronomy until about 1609), were much more accurate
than any made by his predecessors. They allowed Kepler, who (unlike Tycho) was a convinced follower of Copernicus, to deduce his three laws of
planetary motion (1609, 1619) and to construct astronomical tables, the
Rudolphine Tables (Ulm, 1627), whose enduring accuracy did much to persuade
astronomers of the correctness of the Copernican theory. However, until at
least the mid-seventeenth century, Tycho's model of the planetary system was
that favoured by most astronomers. It had the advantage of avoiding the
problems introduced by ascribing motion to the Earth.
J J O'Connor and E F Robertson
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