Hagecius, and arrived at Hveen in the summer of 1580, where he took part in the observations of the comet of that year from the 21st to the 26th October.[1] He showed himself a very able mathematician, according to Tycho's own testimony,[2] and declared it to be his wish to stay at Uraniborg and be a "fidus Achates" to Tycho. But when he had been about three months at Hveen, he announced that he had to go home to Breslau, as a rich uncle of his was dead and he wanted to secure the inheritance, but he would return to Hveen in seven or eight weeks. He took with him a letter from Tycho to Hagecius (dated 4th November 1580), and Tycho became very uneasy when he neither heard anything from Wittich (who never returned to Hveen) nor received an answer from Hagecius for more than a year. He learned at last, in 1582, that the letter had been duly delivered.[3] A few years after he heard that Wittich had, about 1584, turned up at Cassel, where his descriptions of Tycho's improvements in instruments, particularly of the sights and the transversal divisions, as well as of Tycho's sextants for distance measures, created so great a sensation that the Landgrave immediately had his instruments improved and altered by his mechanician, Joost Bürgi, in accordance with Wittich's descriptions.[4] When Tycho
- ↑ In the observations (Tychonis Brahe Observationes Septem Cometarum, Hafniæ, 1867, p. 30) there is a note written in October 1600, and signed Jacob Monaw, certifying that the observations of October 21st to 26th were written in Wittich's hand. I find in Jöcher's Gelehrten Lexicon that this Monaw was a Jesuit from Breslau (1546-1603), where he had evidently known Wittich.
- ↑ In Tycho's Mechanica, fol. I. 3, he is mentioned as "quidam insignis mathematicus," and in Progymn., ii. p. 464, he is called "quidam Vratislauiensis non vulgaris Mathematicus." In a letter to Rothmann (Epist. Astr., p. 61) Tycho says that Wittich ingratiated himself with him "quod hominem ob ingeniosam in Mathematicis, præsertim quo ad Geometriam attinet, solertiam magnifacerem." We shall see farther on that Tycho and Wittich together deduced convenient formulæ whereby multiplication and division of trigonometrical quantities were avoided. See also Epist., p. 296.
- ↑ T. Brahe et Doct. Vir. Epistolæ, pp. 54, 58, 64.
- ↑ Epist. Astron., p. 3.
