Life of Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe biography, outline: Danish philosopher born to nobility in 1546, took observational astronomy to a new level of accuracy, died 1601.
Facts about Tycho Brahe
There are not many facts about Tycho Brahe's early life, so let's jump to some of the amazing facts about Tyco Brahe as an adult.
King Frederick II of Denmark gave Tycho Brahe the island of Hven, just off the Danish coast. He also paid for Uraniborg ("Castle of the Heavens") - Tycho Brahe's world-leading observatory. This consumed 5% of Denmark's GNP over several years - "an all-time world record for research centre funding," Singh p.47.
Uraniborg held giant naked-eye instruments (the telescope had not been invented yet). These included sextants, quadrants and armillary spheres.
Tycho Brahe argued that planets orbited the Sun, but the Sun orbited the Earth. "He was reluctant to dislodge the Earth, because its supposed centrality was the only way to explain why objects fall towards the centre of the Earth." Singh p.50.
A new king cut off Tycho Brahe's funding and he moved to Prague where Emperor Rudolph II gave him Benatky Castle, funding and a new assistant - Johannes Kepler . He died soon after meeting Kepler and left him all his observational data.
Timeline for Tycho Brahe
| Before | Contemporary | After |
| Aristotle | Sir Isaac Newton | |
| Galileo biography | ||
| Ptolemy biography | Johannes Kepler biography | |
| Copernicus biography | A Short Biography of Albert Einstein |