Mæstlinus, Michael

, a celebrated astronomer of Germany, whose name deserves to be preserved, was born about 1542, in the dutchy of Wirtemberg, and spent his youth in Italy, where he made a public speech in favour of Copernicus, which served to wean Galileo from Aristotle and Ptolemy, to whom he had been hitherto entirely devoted. He returned afterwards to Germany, and became professor of mathematics at Tubingen; where he had among his scholars the great Kepler. Tycho Brahe, though he did not assent to Maestlin, has yet allowed him to be an extraordinary person, and well acquainted with the science of astronomy. Kepler has praised several ingenious inventions of Mæstlin’s, in his “Astronomia Optica.” He died in 1590, after having published many works in mathematics and astronomy, among which were his treatises “De Stella nova Cassiopeia;” “Ephemerides,” according to the Prutenic Tables, which were first published by Erasmus Reinoldus in 1551. He published Iikew4se “Thesis de Eclipsibus” and an “Epitome of Astronomy,” &c. ¹