ANST - FW: Musing on August 8th -- Three Nerds and a Toilet Seat

[j'lynn yeates]

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- -----Original Message-----
From: Ellsworth Weaver [mailto:astroweaver at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 22:06
To: 2thpix at surfari.net
Subject: Musing on August 8th -- Three Nerds and a Toilet Seat


Dear Folk,

Today, August 8, marks events in three great scientists’ lives. One
was
born, one died, and one built a castle. Bet you have even heard of at
least one of them. Or maybe not.

Some sources give August 8, 1602 and some give August 10 as the
birthday of Gilles Roberval. Hey, I am going to celebrate both days
and
so can you. Roberval was a nerd of 14 when he first got into math. He
left his native Senlis, France to travel all over the country. He
would
truck around to universities and annoy math teachers. Whenever
possible
he earned a living teaching math to other kids. Know anybody like him
today? Of course you do. He even went to Bordeaux to meet with Fermat
(famous for his unprovable "Last Theorem" – I could tell you but
then...well, you know.) BTW, Tom Stoppard's play "Arcadia" explores
that pesky theorem.

In 1632 he was made a professor at the College Gervais in Paris and
then two years later he was appointed to the Ramus chair of
mathematics
in the College Royale. What was his big thing? Integration – finding
the area or volume of geometric figures. He also did pretty well at
drawing tangents to curves. He is credited with being the father of
the
geometry of motion. He even invented a balance type scale which is
still used as a standard. He worked with Jean Picard in map making
and
helped Blaise Pascal with some of the instruments he used.

Roberval died on October 27, 1675 in Paris.

Today August 8, 1579, Tycho Brahe laid the cornerstone for his castle
Uranienborg. Any of you remember this great Danish astronomer? I sure
do!

Tycho Brahe was a nephew of the warship sailor Jörgen Brahe. His
uncle
was considered to be very proficient but also somewhat violent to his
crew. Jörgen Brahe died 1565 when he valiantly jumped into the cold
water from a bridge to save the king Fredrik II.  Fredrik II was
nothing if he was not a grateful king. May the Blessed Mother of God
grant that all kings are so grateful. Fredrik II took special notice
of
young nephew Tycho. Tycho had discovered a new star, "stella nova",
in
Cassiopeia in 1572. Yep, that is where we get the term "nova." Small
aside: Chevy Novas were not doing well in sales in Mexico. Seems that
nova could be translated into "does not go."

In 1576 Tycho received the island Hven as a gift from King Fredrik
II.
Yep, it was just like heaven. A beautiful place to build a castle
with
an observatory, Uranienborg. It was named for Urania, the goddess of
astronomy / astrology. Everything would be as smooth as a prune
danish
but Tycho was a tad choleric. In 1597 he had hacked off a number of
royal supporters and had to leave his island.

He wandered around Europe to Hamburg and then to Prague. he got a
nice
castle near Prague from Emperor Rudolf II. It wasn't the same. Hamlet
was not the only melancholy Dane.

Tycho Brahe built a remarkable star catalogue of over 1000 stars, far
more than any astronomer before him. That was a lot of nights just
sitting out in the dark with a red light and a pencil. He proved that
comets are not objects in the atmosphere. He showed irregularities in
the moon’s orbit. His wall quadrant and other instruments became
widely
copied and lead to improved stellar instruments. Kepler used Tycho
Brahe's observations when he constructed his famous laws of planetary
movement. Okay, Tycho still thought the earth was the center of the
solar system with the moon, then the sun orbiting it. Of course, he
had
the rest of the planets orbiting the sun. Pretty close, right?

Tycho hired Johannes Kepler in 1600 to help him. Tycho was only to
live
less than a year after that. Kepler wrotes down Tycho Brahe’s last
words: "Ne frustra vixisse videar" (May I not seemed to have lived in
vain)

Tycho's wife was a commoner, Kirstin Jörgensdatter. They were never
married in church. She gave him three sons and five daughters. Guess
he
did not stay out every night. Tycho had a brother Steen, who became a
nobleman, and a sister Sofie, who studied alchemy, astrology and
medicine on the island of Hven. Tycho lived by the words "Non videri
sed esse" (Not to be seen but to be.)

The castle Uranienborg and his observatory Stjärneborg were destroyed
within a few years of the death of Tycho Brahe. Built a shopping mall
and some cheap condos there, I bet.

Girolamo Fracastoro died on or near August 8, 1553 in Verona, his
home
town. He had been born there 75 years before. His dad had a small
villa
outside of town and Fracastoro spent most of his early life there. He
received his first literary and philosophical instruction from his
father. Later, when he outstripped his dad’s knowledge, he studied
literature, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine at the
University of Padua, and received his M.D. degree in 1502.

Fracastoro's scientific thought culminated and concluded with "De
contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione" (1546), which assured
him a lasting place in the history of epidemiology. In it he
described
a whole raft of contagious diseases and the means by which contagion
can be spread. Understand that this was about 300 years before
Pasteur.
Closely associated with this was "Syphilis, sive morbus gallicus" the
book that gave the disease its name. Now I am no Latin scholar but
does
it seem that "morbus" might mean sickness or deadly disease and
"gallicus" meaning French? How about that! Maybe it doesn’t mean that
at all. Still, it would seem logical for a boy from Verona to think
that.  "Syphilis" contains an important section on Columbus’
discovery
of America, although Fracastoro rejected the theory. already being
circulated, that Columbus brought the disease back to Europe from the
New World. Nowhere in this work is anything about toilet seats or
public swimming pools; I checked.

Fracastoro was not content to just practice medicine on nasty
diseases.
He was a humanist poet, and some of his medical works, including
Syphilis, are in poetry. I am now entertaining the idea of a poetry
contest with STDs as a theme. Wait until I ask for entries, please.
Besides his medical writings, he also published works on natural
philosophy (a work on sympathies and antipathies), and astronomy. He
also studied the medicinal properties of plants.

What have we learned from this? If you jump in to save a king, your
survivors might get something good? Two, four, six, eight, we don’t
want to integrate? Best not hack off your landlord? Mathematicians
even
annoy other mathematicians – probably *especially* annoy? If you want
to make a splash in history, it helps to start young? How about: even
venereal diseases are grist for poetry’s mill? You betcha!

Happiest of birthdays to Ioseph of Locksley, historian par
excellence.
Welcome aboard Alexandra (one of the best and brightest of new
poets),
may your star, like Polaris, remain fixed in the sky.

As always, if you wish to spread this contagion, leave my name and
sig
attached.

Venus if you will, please send a little girl for me to thrill,
J.  Ellsworth Weaver

SCA – Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS – Polyphemus Theognis
TRV – Sebastian Yeats


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