The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution

Natural History, March, 2007 by Laurence A. Marschall

The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution by Dennis Danielson Walker & Company; $25.95

Without the prodding of others, two of the greatest works of Western science--Newton's Principia and Copernicus's De revolutionibus--might never have seen the light of day. Newton, an otherworldly genius, began to develop his laws of motion as early as 1664, but squirreled away his notes as if they were no more than old tax forms. So what made him publish? Some twenty years later, his friend Edmond Halley, of comet fame, was curious about whether Sir Isaac had any ideas on what kept the planets in orbit. Sir Isaac did.

In similar fashion, Copernicus was too busy as a cleric and physician to pen more than a brief commentary about the sun-centered universe. His culture-changing book came about only under the urging of a young disciple, George Joachim Rheticus. Today Halley is almost as well-known as Newton, but Rheticus has gotten little more than passing mention.

Until now. Dennis Danielson, a professor of English at the University of British Columbia, has written a biography, both readable and scholarly, that restores Rheticus to his rightful position as a central intellect of the sixteenth century. Rheticus was only twenty-five when, in 1539, he first traveled to Frauenburg (in what is now Poland) to study with Copernicus. Yet he was already a scholar of exceptional promise. A professorship of mathematics had been created expressly for him three years earlier at the University of Wittenberg.

Rheticus was enthusiastic about Copernicus's novel idea of how the universe was constructed, and within two years of his visit he had published a short precis on the Copernican theory, the Narratio prima ("First Account"), the first public exposition of Copernicanism for general readers. He also took over the task of getting Copernicus, by then frail and infirm, to set down the mathematical details of his theory on paper. It was a difficult task, but the typeset pages arrived in 1543, as Copernicus lay on his deathbed.

For the rest of his life, Rheticus published seminal works on geometry, championed Copernicanism, and eventually pursued a second career as a medical doctor. But Rheticus never stayed long in one place. His sojourn with Copernicus was only one of several "research trips" he took to visit interesting thinkers. After Wittenberg he accepted a chair in Leipzig, only to leave soon afterward for Italy, to discuss mathematics with Girolamo Cardano. A natural restlessness, a taste for wine, the habit of living beyond his means, and a fondness for young men kept him on the move as the years went on. Yet he managed to remain remarkably productive until his death in 1574.

It's ironic that Rheticus's own astronomical work, unlike that of Copernicus, lay unfinished at Rheticus's death, and only twenty-two years later saw the light of day. Maybe it's doubly ironic that this work--calculating tables of trigonometric functions to at least ten decimal places by hand--could be done today with a disposable electronic calculator. But in the late 1500s, the tables were an impressive advance, and as useful to the scientific enterprise, perhaps, as the invention of the slide rule. They remained essential to astronomers for centuries thereafter. For his role in the birth of mathematical astronomy, Rheticus justly deserves to be remembered, along with Halley, as one of the fathers--and midwives--of modern science.

LAURENCE A. MARSCHALL, author of The Supernova Story, is W.K.T. Sahm Professor of Physics at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, and director of Project CLEA, which produces widely used simulation software for education in astronomy.