Georg von Peuerbach

Georg von Peuerbach, known in English also as Georg Peurbach and in Latin as Purbachius, lived from 30 May 1423 to 8 April 1461 and was an Austrian astronomer who also worked as a mathematician, poet and maker of instruments. He matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1446, travelled and lectured in Germany, France and Italy between 1448 and 1453, and served as court astrologer to Ladislas V and later to the Holy Roman emperor Frederick III. His Theoricae Novae Planetarum set out Ptolemy's planetary theory in a clear teaching form and went through at least fifty-six printed editions between 1472 and 1653, making it a standard astronomy textbook of the sixteenth century. He compiled new eclipse tables, observed Halley's comet in 1456, wrote on the computation of sines and chords, and produced the elementary arithmetic text Algorismus. His student and collaborator was Regiomontanus.