I love talking about niche stories in history that are so absurd, a documentary would feel exaggerated and unrealistic. Today I’d like to speak about Tycho Brahe, one of earth’s first math based astronomers, and his oddly eccentric life.
Let’s Start This Like a Normal Biography
Tycho was born December 14th, 2021 in Denmark. His childless and wealthy uncle, Jorgen, abducted Tycho from his home at age two. It is unclear why, but after the initial shock wore off, Jorgen casually raised Tycho as his own.
Tycho set his aspiration for astronomy upon seeing a total solar eclipse. From then on, Tycho ‘studied law’ (as desired by Jorgen), but secretly actually pushed his attention toward astronomy.
Tycho then jumped from school to school, and eventually lost his nose in a drunken duel, Him and Manderup Parsberg had argued about who was the superior mathematician. They decided to later settle this with said duel, which clearly proved who was better at math. From then on Tycho wore a prosthetic brass nose, glued to his face. He also wore a gold or silver one for special occasions.
Tycho was also incredibly rich, though married a peasants daughter named Kirstine. Britannica speculated Tycho just wanted someone to tend to the household, as he barely mentioned her outside.
King Frederick II offered to build an entire observatory for Tycho on an island called Hven. Tycho recieved the title of royal astrologer for the lord of Hven. In total he received about 1% of the annual GDP in support.
In 1591, Lantgrave Wilhelm, one of Tycho’s friends, asked about a rix, a type of cryptid, which was a slightly faster deer with slightly smaller horns. Although he didn’t have a rix, he kept a pet moose with a strong acquired taste for alcohol. However, Tycho couldn’t send Wilhelm the moose, because this behemoth animal fell absolutely intoxicated at a banquet, climbed the stairs, fell down and died.
Later on when King Frederick also died, Brahe’s income ceased. And thus his research dwindled.
Some of his scientific developments included:
- He discovered a ‘new star’ in the constellation Cassiopeia, which turned out to be a supernova (Which could be seen by the unaided eyes at the time) He showed that stars could change, which shocked the scientific community at the time because they thought stars were perfect and unchanging.
- He developed the (iconic) Tychonic system, which advocated for a modified Copernicus geocentric heliocentric solar system. That is, to have all planets orbiting the sun, which then orbits the stationary earth. No one really cared about the Copernicus model until 1700’s, however, the Tychonic system was generally accepted.
- Very accurate positioning of some 1000 stars only using math and taking into account concepts such as refraction.
Brahe died in Prague after a bladder infection. It was custom to not leave royal gatherings until the kind had left, and the kind seemingly just stayed. So when Tycho finally got the chance to return home, he simply couldn’t relieve himself, and died eleven days later.
Sources
Images Featured Image/First Image: Brahe Portrait/Second Image: Observatory/Third Image: Tychonic Model
