ABSTRACT
Theories of the Planets, 1454), was first printed posthumously ca. 1472 by his student and colleague Johannes Regiomontanus (1436-1476). This influential university text had appeared in more than fifty editions by the late seventeenth century. It spawned several commentaries and introduced such students as Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) to an elementary but updated version of Ptolemaic astronomy. Its woodcut illustrations depict eccentric planetary models imbedded within thick, spherical shells with surfaces concentric with the earth. Peurbach also calculated eclipse tables, Tabulae eclipsium (ca. 1459; printed 1514), which he organized in an innovative fashion, and composed treatises on the construction of various instruments and calculating devices. In 1460 Peurbach began an Epitome of Ptolemy’s (ca. 100-ca. 170) Almagest, which was only half finished when he died of the plague in 1461. His colleague Regiomontanus completed the work the following year.
