Regiomontanus

Johannes Muller von Konigsberg (1436 to 1476), known as Regiomontanus, was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer of the fifteenth century who worked in Vienna, Buda and Nuremberg. He studied in Vienna as the pupil and friend of Georg von Peuerbach, and on Peuerbach's death finished his abridgement of Ptolemy's Almagest, a critique of the existing Latin translation that Copernicus later cited as an influence. His De triangulis omnimodis of 1464 was among the first textbooks to present trigonometry as a subject in its own right. In Hungary he computed astronomical and trigonometric tables, and in Nuremberg he set up what is described as the first scientific printing press and printed the first astronomical textbook. He observed the Great Comet of 1472 and was called to Rome in 1475 to work on calendar reform, where he died in 1476, probably of plague.