Nicolaus Reimers

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Nicolaus Reimers Ursus (also Reymers , Raimarus , Raymarus , the Latin epithet Ursus means "bear"; * February 2, 1551 in Hennstedt (Dithmarschen) ; † August 15, 1600 in Prague ) was an astronomer and imperial court mathematician. He was the first to translate Nicolaus Copernicus' main work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium into German.

Origin and career

According to tradition, Reimers worked as a swineherd until he was 18 years old. He had not attended a Latin school, which opened up access to the sciences at that time, but was purely self-taught who not only taught himself to write, read and arithmetic, but also the scientific languages ​​Latin and Greek. The royal governor of Schleswig-Holstein, Heinrich Rantzau , recognized Reimers' talents and encouraged him. For Rantzau he worked as a surveyor from 1574 to 1584 and published in this context a Latin grammar in which the declinations are arranged according to the number of syllables, and in 1583 a book on land surveying ( geodesy ). In 1577 he is registered in the matriculation of the University of Rostock . In 1584 he visited Rantzau's friend, the astronomer Tycho Brahe, on his island Ven in the Öresund off Landskrona . The epithet Ursus appears for the first time in 1588 in his publication Fundamentum Astronomicum. Moritz Cantor suspected that the nickname should identify him as an unlicked Nordic bear who opposed the robbery of his young. The nickname Ursus (bear), however, indicates the sex of the bears in Dithmarschen, to which Nicolaus Reimers Ursus belonged.

In 1585 and 1586 he was tutor to two noble families in Pomerania, from 1586 to 1587 Reimers stayed at the court of Landgrave Wilhelm IV in Kassel , where he met the instrument maker Jost Bürgi (1552-1632). The similarities in the course of the “school” training of the two friends will have connected them beyond the technical level, Bürgi could hardly speak Latin. Reimers therefore translated Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium into German for Bürgi . The text has been preserved as a so-called “Grazer Handschrift” and is considered to be the first German translation of Copernicus' main work, three centuries before that of Menzzer , which was printed in 1879.

From 1587 to 1591 Reimers taught mathematics at the academy in Strasbourg , where he also met Bürgi's teacher Konrad Dasypodius .

In 1591 he was appointed court mathematician to the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. In order to secure economic security, he was also appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Prague . He retained this position as court scholar until shortly before his death, but gave it up not least because of the legal dispute with Brahe that was also worsening. He died of consumption on August 15, 1600 and was buried on August 16, 1600 in the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague.

Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler followed him in office as imperial court mathematicians .

The lunar crater Reimarus is named after him.

The argument between Brahe and Reimers

The idea as a subject of dispute:
Paul Wittich's tychonic worldview
The model by Nicolaus Reimers

In September 1585, after his visit to Tycho Brahe on the island of Ven, Reimers devised a new, only partially geocentric system of planets in Pomerania , according to which the earth rotates around its axis, the moon and sun revolve around the otherwise stationary one Earth move, but the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn move around the sun. He expressed these thoughts to third parties in Kassel in 1586. Brahe received knowledge of this from Rothmann and published the system as his invention. Reimers' publication Fundamentum Astronomicum (1588) collided with Brahe's tychonic worldview .

Brahe saw this accusation exactly the opposite and accused Reimers of plagiarism .

Nicolaus Reimers attacked Brahe hard in his De Astronomicis Hypothesibus , whereupon the latter took action against Reimers because of the insult. Owen Gingerich documented Paul Wittich's central role in the conflict.

Works

  • Grammatica Ranzoviana. 1580.
  • Geodaesia Ranzoviana. Leipzig 1583.
  • Translation of De Revolutionibus into German. Manuscript 1586/87.
  • Nicolai Raymari Ursi Dithmarsi Fundamentum Astronomicum. Strasbourg 1588.
  • Metamorphosis Logicae. Strasbourg 1589.
  • Nicolai Raymari Ursi Dithmarsi Croius Puer seu Carmen Congratulations. Strasbourg 1589.
  • Old and also Rom. Writing calendar to the year 1593. Erfurt 1592.
  • Prognosticon Astrologicum of this 1593th jars. Erfurt 1592.
  • Allmanach to the year 1591 , Strasbourg no year. [Available City Archives Frankfurt / Oder, Sign. I 797 (20)]
  • Old and new writing calendars on the year 1594. Erfurt 1593.
  • Allegory on Emperor Rudolph II. 1594
  • Nicolai Raymari Ursi Dithmarsi Parentatio Iacobi Curtii. Prague 1594.
  • Nicolai Raimari Ursi Dithmarsi de Astronomicis Hypothesibus. Prague 1597, online .
  • Chronotheatron. Prague 1597.
  • Demonstratio Hipotheses Motuum Coelestium. Prague.
  • Nicolai Raimari Ursi Dithmarsi Arithmetica Analytica vulgo Cosa or Algebra. posthumously Frankfurt / Oder 1601.
  • Nicolai Raimari Ursi Ditmarsi Chronological evidence. posthumously Nuremberg 1606, Schleswig 1606, Schleswig 1666.

literature

  • Dieter Launert: Nicolaus Reimers (Raimarus Ursus). Rantzau's favorite - Brahe's enemy. Life and work. Munich 1999, ISBN 3-89241-030-5 .
  • Dieter Launert: Nicolaus Reimers Ursus. Place value system and algebra in Geodaesia and Arithmetica. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7696-0969-1 .
  • Owen Gingerich, Robert S. Westman: The Wittich Connection: Conflict and Priority in Late Sixteenth-Century Cosmology. American Philosophical Society 1988 ( online )
  • Dieter Launert: Astronomical Hypotheses of Nicolaus Reimers Ursus - A pamphlet against Tycho Brahe. Nova Kepleriana, Treatises of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, New Series 146, Munich 2019, ISBN 978 3 7696 0134 3 .

Remarks

  1. Geodaesia Ranzoviana. Landt arithmetic, and field measurements, sampt measurements of all kinds ...
  2. On the report on another visit to Ven mediated by Rantzau: Georg Ludwig Frobenius .
  3. ADB, Volume 27, p. 179.
  4. Graz University Library / manuscript catalog / catalog no.560
  5. ^ Nicolaus Copernicus complete edition : De revolutionibus: the first German translation in the Graz handwriting. (on-line)
  6. Jürgen Hamel : The astronomical research in Kassel under Wilhelm IV. With a scientific partial edition of the translation of the main work of Copernicus 1586. (= Acta Historica Astronomiae. Vol. 2). Thun, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-8171-1569-5 .