Jan Brożek

Jan Brożek, in Latin Johannes Broscius, born in Kurzelów in south-central Poland in November 1585 and dead on 21 November 1652, was the most prominent Polish mathematician of his era and an early biographer of Copernicus, who held numerous ecclesiastical offices in the Catholic Church and was associated with the Kraków Academy for his entire career. His father, an educated landowner, introduced him to the principles of geometry. He enrolled at the Kraków Academy in 1604, took his baccalaureate in 1605 and a magister degree, equivalent to a doctorate, in 1610, and his association with the Belgian mathematician Adriaan van Roomen greatly influenced his studies. In 1614 he became professor of astrology at the Kraków Academy, in 1618 he travelled to Toruń, Gdańsk and Frombork gathering material for a biography of Copernicus, and between 1616 and 1620 he surveyed the boundaries of the Kraków bishopric. He studied medicine at Padua from 1620 and took a doctorate in 1623.