PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW: PART 3- TYCHO BRAHE

Every once in a while humanity creates an individual so insanely intelligent that they don't fit in in this world. (ie: Alan Turing, me) They attempt to showcase their intelligence and get called crazy for being ahead of the curve. Then, they sadly shrivel into the depths of history until some historian decades later finds the "lunatic" scientist's old work and deems it to be fact.

One of this people is Tycho Brahe, a Danish scientist born in 1546. He was born into a wealthy family which pressured him to study law which Brahe obviously disobeyed. He used his family's wealth to attend top universities and would go on to be an associate to the one and only Johannes Kepler.

Brahe was on the verge of a life changing discovery like someone coming home to their cheating spouse, as the Tycho Brahe Biography article by space.com states.

In 1572, Brahe observed a supernova in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Brighter than Venus, the new star remained visible for a year and a half.  1577, he observed a comet. Current theory taught that both were disturbances in the atmosphere. However, Brahe's precise measurements revealed differently. He proved that the supernova never changed with regard to the surrounding stars, and that the comet orbited beyond the path of the moon, contradicting the idea that the heavens never changed.

Tycho wads the first to discover that the universe was dynamic, not static. All without a telescope and Google. Then why do I only remember hearing about Kepler in school? Maybe because Tycho was the Mel Gibson of scientists.

Once when he was young, he instigated a duel over who was the better mathematician with another student which ended in him getting his nose shot off.

Could that be why Voldemort is no longer in our science books? Maybe it was because in his circle of friends was a dwarf called "Jepp" who Brahe claimed was clairvoyant. Jepp's main job was to wear a court jester's outfit and sit under the table until someone asked a question Brahe couldn't answer.

I think Tycho missed his chance. He had a dwarf that could read minds and didn't name him "Small Medium"? Some genius.

Maybe the reason that his name was somewhat lost was his hobby of getting himself and his pet moose sacrilegiously drunk and racing it down the stairs of his castle.

Kepler and Brahe worked together briefly until a dispute over the sharing of Tycho's findings sent them into a conflict. They both wanted to figure out why it seemed like Mars would move backwards according to their measurements and it stumped them both. This would later be the foundation for Copernicus discovering that plants orbited the sun in an oval instead of a circle.

At a dinner party in 1601, Brahe is rumored to have heavily sedated himself with alcohol and societal etiquette deemed that he couldn't get up from the table. He died at 54 of a burst bladder. Social contract was his death certificate.

Accept it wasn't, because a centuries later scientists discovered traces of Mercury in his bones that spell out a possible poisoning. It is rumored that Kepler had him poisoned and stole all of his findings because he would later publish what would be the evidential foundation for Copernicus the decade after.  I sent this into Cold Case files and they have not gotten back to me. They don't take 400 year old cases apparently.

Please fell free to explore the mad scientist Tycho Brahe and the Tycho-path he really was. Till next time!