REINHOLD , ERASMUS

Little is known about the life of Reinhold other than that he was born at Saalfeld in Germany and became a student at Wittenberg, where he was appointed professor of astronomy in 1536 and rector of the university in 1549. He died a few years later from bubonic plague.

In 1542 Reinhold published a commentary on theTheoricae novae planetarum(New Theories about Planets) of Georg von Purbach, a traditional Ptolemaic text dating from about 1454. He is best known, however, for hisTabulae Prutenicae(Prussian Tables, 1551), the first work to provide astronomical tables based upon the new heliocentric system of Copernicus. He referred to Copernicus as “a second Atlas, a second Ptolemy,” but went on to complain that the computations in Copernicus did not agree with Copernicus's own observations. Comparison between the two based upon recalculations with a computer have established that the accuracy of Reinhold's calculations systematically exceeds that of Copernicus. Although Reinhold's work did much to extend Copernican views, Reinhold made no reference to heliocentric assumptions in his tables.