Jost burgi biography

Strieder , Hess. Gelehrten- u. I, Marburg , S. Fueter, Schweizer Forscher , P. Sadeler, Burgi: Jobst B. Mag es auch zweifelhaft erscheinen, ob B. Jahrhunderts behauptet Becker, Physic. Sagt doch Wilhelm IV. Noch im J. Dort verlebte er die letzten Jahre seines an Arbeit reichen Lebens, welches er bis auf 81 Jahre brachte. Weniger bekannt wurden die astronomischen Beobachtungen, welche er von bis in Cassel auf der Sternwarte des Zwehrenthores etwa hinter dem heutigen Museum anstellte.

The book is well researched there are many original sources and not just secondary literature , it is clearly and well written and also beautifully printed. Jost Buergi is a very interesting Renaissance personality, an universal talent that is even today vastly underestimated. For example, it has only been realized recently that the logarithms of Buergi were not only found long before Napier, but that they were also introduced in a more modern and clearer manner than those of Napier.

Also, the enormous influence of Buergi on Kepler is made clear in the book. Without the logarithms of Buergi, the latter would hardly have found the Kepler laws. While other cases of unusual geniuses have been documented extensively examples are Archimedes, who was also an engineer and inventor, George Green, who was a miller, Albert Einstein who was a patent employee, Srinivasa Ramanujan, who was an autodidact, Fritz Zwicky, a rocket man , so is the case Buergi much less well known.

This book will help to give the necessary attention to one of the best and most creative mathematicians of the renaissance. On the structure of the book: the first chapter describes the origin of Buergi Lichtensteig in Toggenburg. The author built in a lot of historical background here. He had married the daughter of David Bramer, who was a pastor in Felsberg near Kassel, but the marriage was childless.

A copy of this translation, called the "Grazer Handschrift", has survived to this day. It is not clear precisely when he started using logarithms but most historians believe that he invented them around References show. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Not much is known about his life or education before his employment as astronomer and clockmaker at the court of William IV in Kassel in ; it has been theorized that he acquired his mathematical knowledge at Strasbourg , among others from Swiss mathematician Conrad Dasypodius , but there are no facts to support this.

Although an autodidact, he was already during his lifetime considered as one of the most excellent mechanical engineers of his generation.

Jost burgi biography

A copy of the translation survived in Graz , it is thus called "Grazer Handschrift". In , he entered the service of emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Here, he befriended Johannes Kepler. It is undocumented where he learned his clockmaking skills, but eventually he became the most innovative clock and scientific instrument maker of his time.

This allowed for the first time clocks to be used as scientific instruments, with enough accuracy to time the passing of stars and other heavenly bodies in the crosshairs of telescopes to start accurately charting stellar positions. Working as an instrument maker for the court of William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in Kassel [ 12 ] he played a pivotal role in developing the first astronomical charts.

He supposedly used these algorithms to calculate a « Canon Sinuum », a table of sines to 8 places in steps of 2 arc seconds. Nothing more is known on this table, and some authors have speculated that its range was only over 45 degrees. Such tables were extremely important for navigation at sea. Johannes Kepler called the Canon Sinuum the most precise known table of sines.

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