Sophie Brahe

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Sophie Brahe

Sophie Brahe (born August 24, 1559 at Knutstorp Castle , Skåne , † 1643 in Helsingør ), Tycho Brahe's sister , was a Danish astronomer .

Life

Sophie Brahe was the youngest of the twelve children of Otte Brahe (1518–1571) and Beate Clausdatter Bille (1526–1602). Her parents were among the richest and most influential families in Denmark. Her father became a member of the Imperial Council in 1563 and later governor of Helsingborg . After the father's death, her mother managed his father's property and was Queen Sophie's chief steward from 1584 to 1592 .

Sophie had an excellent education. In addition to Danish, she also spoke German. She had to acquire most of her scientific knowledge on her own and against the opposition of her family, who considered scientific activity to be inappropriate for nobles and especially for noble women. She was supported by her older brother Tycho Brahe. He taught her horticulture and chemistry . She acquired her knowledge of astronomy , which appealed to her most, on her own, because Tycho found mathematics and astronomy too complicated for a girl. For this she had Latin books translated at her own expense. Her brother soon recognized her skills, so that she began working with him frequently as a teenager. In his Uranienborg Castle Observatory on the Öresund Island of Ven off Landskrona , they made celestial observations together and wrote a new catalog of fixed stars of a thousand star locations. Together they observed and described the first known supernova on November 11, 1572 , a lunar eclipse on December 8, 1573 and a comet in 1577 . Her own share in her brother's work cannot be precisely reconstructed due to the lack of records. However, Pierre Gassendi reports on her excellent knowledge in his biography of Tycho Brahe.

The collaboration was interrupted around 1579 by a forced marriage to 33-year-old Otto Thott and the birth of their son Tage Thott (1580-1659). Sophie planted a famous garden at Eriksholm, her husband's manor house in Skåne , expanded her chemical and medical knowledge by studying Paracelsus and worked as a doctor for the estate subjects. In 1587, King Frederick II , who was very supportive of Tycho, signed the nearby Årup estate near Ivetofta, whose church she had renovated and refurbished.

After Brahe's husband died in 1588, she raised the son and administered her property. As a widow she enjoyed greater freedom and was able to continue her studies in chemistry and medicine and to resume exploring the stars together with her brother. For this she traveled to Ven several times a year. They also made horoscopes together . At that time she wrote some of her own works on astronomy, which her brother planned to publish. However, these have not been preserved. She also accompanied her brother on public occasions to which his commoner wife was not allowed. This collaboration ended when Tycho first went to Wandsbeck in 1597 and then to Prague in 1598 at the court of the culture and science enthusiast Emperor Rudolf II . moved where he died in 1601.

Around 1590 she met a friend of her brother, the Danish nobleman and alchemist Erik Lange. Through his experiments he squandered all of his fortune and in 1592 had to flee to northern Germany because of his high debts. The Latin poem Urania Titani , written in Ovid's style , which Tycho Brahe wrote in 1594 and which laments the separation of the lovers, dates from this period . When her son Eriksholm left to study, Sophie Brahe traveled to Hamburg and met Erik Lange again. After Tycho's death and an engagement period of more than ten years, Sophie and Erik Lange married in Eckernförde in 1602 . Her family did not accept her scientific work and withheld the money to which she was entitled, which is why the couple initially lived in poverty, as Sophie complained in a letter to her sister that has survived. After the wedding they moved to her Årup estate, where she also carried out alchemical studies herself. Erik Lange died in 1613 in Prague, where he had lived since 1608.

After his death she settled in Helsingør and wrote a genealogy of the Danish noble families.

Honor

The Sophie Brahe Community School in Berlin has been named after Sophie Brahe since 2006.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This date corresponds to a horoscope made for her and the report of her brother, according to which she was only 14 years old in 1573 (Zeeberg: Sophie Brahe ). According to other sources, she was born on September 22, 1556.
  2. ^ Sophie Brahe ( Memento from June 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Monique Frize: The Bold and the Brave. A History of Women in Science and Engineering. University of Ottawa Press, Ottawa 2009, p. 64.
  4. ↑ a b Zeeberg: Sophie Brahe
  5. ↑ Jette Anders: 33 Alchemists. P. 113 ff.
  6. ^ Sophie Brahe School
personal data
SURNAME Brahe, Sophie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thott, Sophie; Long, Sophie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish astronomer, sister of Tycho Brahe
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1559
PLACE OF BIRTH Knutstorp Castle , Skåne
DATE OF DEATH 1643
Place of death Elsinore