Born Feldkirch,Vorarlberg, (Austria), 16 February 1514
Died Kassa (Košice, Slovakia), 4 December 1574
Georg Rheticus was among the first to adopt and spread the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus .
Georg von Lauchen, later known as Rheticus, was born in an Austrian town near the Swiss border. His father, Georg Iserin, was the town doctor and a government official; he taught his son until 1528, when he was tried on a charge of sorcery, convicted, and beheaded. One of the consequences of this execution was that his name could no longer be used; therefore, Georg's mother, an Italian noblewoman named Tommasina de Porris, reverted to her maiden name. Since “de Porris” means “of leeks” in Italian, Rheticus preferred to translate it into German “von Lauchen.” Later, he took the additional name of Rheticus, after the ancient Roman province of Rhaetia in which he had been born.
Rheticus studied first at the Latin school in Feldkirch, then at the Frauenmünsterschule in...
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Selected References
Burmeister, H. (1966–1968). Georg Joachim Rhetikus, 1514–1574: Eine Bio‐Bibliographie. 3 Vols. Wiesbaden: Pressler‐Verlag.
Hooykaas, R. (1984). G. J. Rheticus' Treatise on Holy Scripture and the Motion of the Earth: With Translation, Annotations, Commentary, and Additional Chapters on Ramus‐Rheticus and the Development of the Problem before 1650. Amsterdam: North‐Holland.
Rosen, Edward (ed.) (1971). Three Copernican Treatises: The Commentariolus of Copernicus, the Letter against Werner, the Narratio prima of Rheticus. 3rd rev. ed. New York: Octagon Books.
Westman, Robert S. (1975). “The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory.” Isis 66: 165–193.
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Murara, M. (2007). Rheticus. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_830
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