ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to narrate the link between two sixteenth-century humanists, Petrus Ramus and Georg Joachim Rheticus. It illustrates some of the mathematical and astronomical fruit which that relationship helped to cultivate. The chapter seeks to give Ramus some credit for encouraging mathematical developments those pertaining to the work of Rheticus that were indeed momentous. For Ramus understood the vital connection between Rheticus' astronomical and trigonometric achievements, and even more importantly played an active role in stimulating Rheticus to complete the latter. The Canon's dialogue takes place between two characters, Philomathes and Hospes. The very first page of the dialogue makes Rheticus' ongoing Copernican allegiance unambiguous. The conspicuous importance of Rheticus' works on trigonometry and at the same time his increasingly obvious distraction on account of his medical practice. One of the main themes of Fabricius' verses is the tension between the monetary riches offered by medicine and those rewards of a higher kind promised by mathematics.
