at Uraniborg. After having spent a winter as tutor in Pomerania, Reymers went to Cassel in the spring of 1586, where he informed the Landgrave that he had the previous winter, while living on the outskirts of Pomerania, designed a system of the world. This was exactly like Tycho's, except that it admitted the rotation of the earth. The Landgrave was so pleased with the idea, that he got Bürgi to make a model of the new system; but though he had been well received at Cassel, Reymers was not long in favour there, as he fell out with Rothmann, to whom he abused Tycho. Rothmann mentioned this in a letter to Tycho in September 1586,[1] but did not mention Reymers' system, which first became known in 1588 by the above-mentioned book.[2] This contains some chapters on trigonometry and some on astronomy, and in the last chapter the new system is explained and illustrated by a large diagram on about twice as large a scale as that in Tycho's book. The only important difference is, that the orbit of Mars does not intersect that of the sun, but lies quite outside it.
Tycho was apparently very proud of his system, and (as in the case of Wittich) he immediately jumped to the conclusion that Reymers Bär had robbed him of his glory.[3]
- ↑ Epist. astron., p. 33, where Rothmann (who thought that Reymers had been employed in Tycho's printing-office) calls him a dirty blackguard ("plura scriberem, præsertim de impuro illo nebulone"), which expression Tycho now found very suitable (ibid., p. 149).
- ↑ For accounts of this book see Kästner, i. p. 631; Delambre, Astron. moderne, i. p. 287; and Rudolf Wolf's Astronomische Mittheilungen, No. lxviii.
- ↑ Already in 1589 or 1590 Duncan Liddel lectured at Rostock on the Tychonic system, calling it by this name. A report afterwards reached Tycho to the effect that Liddel privately took the credit of the new system to himself, and that he later on did so openly at Helmstadt (see letter from Cramer, a clergyman of Rostock, to Holger Rosenkrands, in Epistolæ ad J. Kepplerum, ed. Hanschius, p. 114 et seq.). It appears, however, that Liddel indignantly denied the charge, though he claimed to have deduced the system himself, and to owe Tycho nothing except the incitation to speculate on the matter, for which reason he had mentioned the system as the "Tychonic" (Kepleri Opera omnia, i. pp. 227, 228).
