Tycho Brahe

Born into Danish nobility on 14 December 1546, Tycho Ottesen Brahe received a thorough education befitting his station. In 1572 he spotted a completely new star brighter than any known body — impossible under Aristotelian doctrine — and spent the next fifteen years obsessed with building ever more accurate instruments. King Frederick II gave him the island of Hven and funding for Uraniborg, Christian Europe's first large observatory, later supplemented by the underground Stjerneborg when he found his original equipment insufficiently stable. He proved that "new stars" lay beyond the Moon and t…