Astronomer Biography

Georg Von Peurbach 

Georg Von Peurbach was born on May 30^th, 1423 in a town in upper Austria called Peuerbach, about forty kilometers west of Linz. Unfortunately almost nothing is known about his early life, except his father's name, Ulrich, and where he was born. His recorded activity began when he started studying at the University of Vienna, and graduated in 1446. Soon after he received his masters degree, he spent the year of 1453-1454 traveling through Germany, France, and Italy lecturing in the field of astronomy. During this time it is said that he met Giovanni Bianchini who, at the time, was the most noted Italian astronomer, and had attempted to persuade Peurbach to accept a job at university in Italy. By the end of 1454, he had become the court astronomer for King Ladislas of Hungary, as well as professor of astronomy at Vienna university. Peurbach’s work at court was completed because of his knowledge in the field of astronomy, but his occupation at the university was mostly concerned with humanistic studies. Such studies include a lecture on the Aeneid in 1454, on Juvenal in 1456, and on the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Horacein 1458, though these last two are more speculation. Peurbach's protege, Johannes Müller von Königsberg, or better known as Regiomontanus, enrolled in the Vienna university in 1450 at the age of 13. Regiomontanus learned much from Peurbach, referring to him as “my teacher”, and both observed together what could become to be called Haley's Comet in June 1456. Peurbach mentioned the comet to Nihil, a fellow astronomer of the time period, as well as writing an astronomical report about it, however this report was not discovered or published until the twentieth century. A year later Peurbach and his assistant observed another comet, as well as a lunar eclipse. This eclipse, as documented by Peurbach, was eight minutes earlier than was predicted by the Alphonsine Tables, and this discovery is what let him to create his own calendar of astronomical events, Eclipse Tables, which were most likely completed in 1459. In 1460 they discovered two more lunar eclipses, one on July 3^rd and the other on December 28^th, but this time they compared their observations to Peurbach’s tables, and found them to be accurate. Around this time there was a bit of a dispute going on in the royal family of Vienna. This led to the archbishop of Nicaea, Johannes Bessarion, a cardinal since 1439, to arrive in Vienna to intervene in the persisting dispute between Frederick III and his brother Albert VI of Styria. While in Vienna, he happened to meet Peurbach and Regiomontanus. Bessarion wished to translate important intellectual texts from Greek to Italian, some of which included the exact sciences. One such manuscript to which he wished to convert was the Almagest, which would replace Gerard of Cremona’s version that was in Arabic. He also wished to create an abridgment of the Almagest so he could use it as a textbook. Although Peurbach was not familiar with the Greek language, he had, according to Regiomontanus, memorized the Almagest and would have no problem translating as well as condensing it. Peurbach took the job of the abridgment, and soon further plans were established for Peurbach and Regiomontanus to accompany Bessarion to Italy and work for him. Unfortunately, Peurbach died before he was able to make the journey on April 8, 1461, with only the first six books of the abridgment completed; he was not yet thirty-eight years old. The early death of the astronomer, as well as the equally early death of Regiomontanus in 1476, left the development of the field of mathematical astronomy disadvantaged of real improvement until Tycho Brahe's generation.