Jost Bürgi
| Jost Bürgi | |
|---|---|
Jobst Burgius
|
|
| Born | 28 February 1552 Lichtensteig, Toggenburg |
| Died |
31 January 1632 (aged 79) Kassel, Holy Roman Empire |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Fields | Mathematician |
| Known for | Logarithms |
Jost Bürgi (also Joost, Jobst; Latinized surname Burgius or Byrgius; 28 February 1552 – 31 January 1632), active primarily at the courts in Kassel and Prague, was a Swiss clockmaker, a maker of astronomical instruments and a mathematician.
Bürgi was born in 1552 Lichtensteig, Toggenburg, at the time a subject territory of the Abbey of St. Gall (now part of the canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland). Not much is known about his life or education before his employment as astronomer and clockmaker at the court of William IV in Kassel in 1579; it has been theorized that he acquired his mathematical knowledge at Strasbourg, among others from Swiss mathematician Conrad Dasypodius, but there are no facts to support this.
Although an autodidact, he was already during his lifetime considered as one of the most excellent mechanical engineers of his generation. His employer, William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, in a letter to Tycho Brahe praised Bürgi as a "second Archimedes" (quasi indagine Archimedes alter est). Another autodidact, Nicolaus Reimers, in 1587 translated Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium into German for Bürgi. A copy of the translation survived in Graz, it is thus called "Grazer Handschrift".
In 1604, he entered the service of emperor Rudolph II in Prague. Here, he befriended Johannes Kepler. Bürgi constructed a table of sines (Canon Sinuum), which was supposedly very accurate, but since the table itself is lost, it is difficult to be sure of its real accuracy (for instance, Valentinus Otho's Opus Palatinum had parts which were not as accurate as it was claimed). An introduction to some of Buergi's methods survives in a copy by Kepler; it discusses the basics of Algebra (or Coss as it was known at the time), and of decimal fractions. Some authors consider Bürgi as one of the inventors of logarithms. His legacy also includes the engineering achievement contained in his innovative mechanical astronomical models. During his years in Praha he worked closely with the astronomer Johannes Kepler at the court of Rudolf II.
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