Georg Limnäus

Georg Limnäus

Georg Limnäus also: Wirn, Lymneus, Limnaeus (* October 23, 1554 in Jena ; † September 15, 1611 ibid) was a German mathematician, astronomer and librarian.

Life

Georg Limnäus' father Antonius Wirn came from Switzerland and joined Johann Friedrich von Sachsen as a soldier. As such, he was the play captain and commandant of the Leuchtenburg Castle on the Saale. After his service, he moved to Jena, where he earned his living as a locksmith and gunsmith. Georg Limnäus attended the city school in Jena and enrolled at the University of Jena (Salana) in the summer semester of 1571 . Here he attended lectures at the philosophical faculty, honored the customs of the time with his name in Limnäus and in 1581 acquired the academic degree of a master's degree in philosophy. With some nobles of the Hutten family he moved to the University of Heidelberg , where he stayed for two years. In 1588 he returned to Jena, where he became professor of mathematics and the first librarian at the university library . His lectures dealt with the sphere of fixed stars and the beginnings of spherical trigonometry. In doing so, he relied on the textbook of Johannes de Sacrobosco .

He also read about geography, geodesy, cosmography, the theory of planets, the use of astronomical tables, general chronology and scientific arithmetic. Limnäus, who dealt with the Copernican view of the world, left five handwritten works and enjoyed a high reputation as an astrologer. He was in contact with Johannes Kepler , Galileo Galilei , Tycho Brahe and Nicolaus Reimers . In 1594 Limnäus set up a small observatory and thus became the founder of the first observatory in Jena. As a university lecturer at Salana, he also took part in the organizational tasks. He was dean of the philosophical faculty six times and was rector of the University of Jena in the summer semesters 1593 and 1609 . Lymnäus and his wife were victims of the 1611 plague in Jena.

Limnäus married on February 3, 1589 in Heldburg with Anna Murhart (also: Moratha; † September 1, 1611 in Jena), the widow of the pastor in Birkenfeld Mag. Johann Breuning. The Jena librarian Wolfgang Limnäus (born September 10, 1590 in Jena; † September 9, 1617 ibid.) And the well-known legal journalist Johannes Limnäus emerged from the marriage.

literature

• Johann Caspar Zeumer, Christoph Weissenborn: Vitae Professorum Theologiae, Jurisprudentiae, Medicinae et Philosophiae qui in illustri Academia Jenensi, ab ipsius fundatione ad nostra usque tempora vixerunt et adhuc vivunt una cum scriptis a quolibet editis quatuor classibus. Johann Felici Bieleck, Jena, 1711, p. 49 (Philosophers, Online )
• Johann Christoph Adelung , Heinrich Wilhelm Rotermund : Continuation and additions to Christian Gottlieb Jöcher's general scholarly lexico, in which writers of all classes are described according to their most distinguished living conditions and writings. Georg Jöntzen, Delmenhorst, 1810, Vol. 3, Col. 1836
• Otto Knopf: Astronomy at the University of Jena, from the founding of the university in 1558 to the author's release in 1927. Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1937, p. 13