Реферат: Tycho Brahe

In 1599 he was appointed Imperial Mathematician to the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II, in Prague. Johannes Kepler joined him as an assistant, to help with mathematical calculations. Tycho intended that this work should prove the truth of his cosmological model, in which the Earth (with the Moon in orbit around it) was at rest in the centre of the Universe and the Sun went round the Earth (all other planets being in orbit about the Sun and thus carried round with it).

Tycho began observing again in Prague. He received support from Rudolph for Kepler and himself to compile a new set of astronomical tables based on Tycho's recorded observations over 38 years. These would be called the Rudolphine Tables as a tribute to their sponsor. However, Tycho died eleven days after dining at the palace of Peter Vok Ursinus Rozmberk as a result of adhering to the etiquette of the day and refusing to leave the dinner table before his host. Kepler describes his death (see for example):-

Holding his urine longer than was his habit, Brahe remained seated. Although he drank a little overgenerously and experienced pressure on his bladder, he felt less concerned for his state of health than for etiquette. By the time he returned home he could not urinate any more. Finally, with the most excruciating pain, he barely passed some urine, but yet it was blocked. Uninterrupted insomnia followed; intestinal fever; and little by little delirium. ... During his last night, through the delirium in which everything was very pleasant, like a composer creating a song, Brahe these words over and over again: "Let me not seem to have lived in vain."

Field writes :-

When Tycho died, Kepler succeeded him as Imperial Mathematician. Tycho's observations of planetary positions, which were made using instruments with open sights (a telescope was not used for astronomy until about 1609), were much more accurate than any made by his predecessors. They allowed Kepler, who (unlike Tycho) was a convinced follower of Copernicus, to deduce his three laws of planetary motion (1609, 1619) and to construct astronomical tables, the Rudolphine Tables (Ulm, 1627), whose enduring accuracy did much to persuade astronomers of the correctness of the Copernican theory. However, until at least the mid-seventeenth century, Tycho's model of the planetary system was that favoured by most astronomers. It had the advantage of avoiding the problems introduced by ascribing motion to the Earth.

J J O'Connor and E F Robertson