Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs

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Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs (1511–1579) was an Austrian humanist, astronomer and Hebraist.

File:Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs.jpg
Erasmus Oswald Schreckenfuchs.

Life

He was born in Merckenstein, near Bad Vöslau in Lower Austria, and studied in Vienna, Ingolstadt and Tübingen. He became a student and friend of Sebastian Münster. Together they translated (into Latin) the Form of the Earth of Abraham bar Hiyya, with work of Elijah ben Abraham Mizrahi.[1][2]

He taught at Freiburg, where the Maltese mathematician Joannes Myriti was a student.[3]

In 1551 he produced a commentary to the Almagest of Ptolemy.[4] He published a targum for the Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes (1553).[5][6]

His Commentaries on George Peurbach's New Theories of the Planets of 1556 were voluminous and broad-minded, considering an eclectic mix of astronomical theories, including those of Copernicus. The approach, however, was little concerned with scientific truth. Schreckenfuchs taught at Nuremberg, and found a follower in Christian Wursteisen.[7]

Other works were Primum mobile (Basel, 1567), and a commentary on the De sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco of 1569.[8]

Notes

  1. http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=449&letter=A
  2. http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=M&artid=675
  3. http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/melitahistoricac/CC07.htm&date=2009-10-26+02:30:06
  4. Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematical Notations: Two Volumes Bound as One (1993 edition), p. 251.
  5. Cantica canticorum et Ecclesiastes Salomonis paraphrasticos
  6. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=classicsfacpub, p. 12.
  7. Pierre Duhem, Sauver les apparences: Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Platon à Galilée (2004 edition), pp. 103-6.
  8. http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/starry/sacrobooks.html

External links