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Jost Bürgi (also ''Joost, Jobst''; Latinized surname ''Burgius'' or ''Byrgius''; 28 February 1552 – 31 January 1632), active primarily at the courts in Kassel and Prague, was a Swiss clockmaker, a maker of astronomical instruments and a mathematician. ==Life== Bürgi was born in 1552 Lichtensteig, Toggenburg, at the time a subject territory of the Abbey of St. Gall (now part of the canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland). Not much is known about his life or education before his employment as astronomer and clockmaker at the court of William IV in Kassel in 1579; it has been theorized that he acquired his mathematical knowledge at Strasbourg, among others from Swiss mathematician Conrad Dasypodius, but there are no facts to support it. Even though he was an autodidact, was already during his lifetime considered as one of the most excellent mechanical engineers of his generation. His employer, William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, in a letter to Tycho Brahe praised Bürgi as a "second Archimedes" ('' quasi indagine Archimedes alter est''). Another autodidact, Nicolaus Reimers, in 1587 translated Copernicus' ''De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium'' into German for Bürgi. A copy of the translation survived in Graz, it is thus called "Grazer Handschrift".〔(UB-Graz / Handschriftenkatalog / Katalogisat Nr.:560 )〕〔Nicolaus Copernicus Gesamtausgabe: ''De revolutionibus: die erste deutsche Übersetzung in der Grazer Handschrift'' ()〕〔Jürgen Hamel: ''Die astronomischen Forschungen in Kassel unter Wilhelm IV. Mit einer wissenschaftlichen Teiledition der Übersetzung des Hauptwerkes von Copernicus 1586'' (Acta Historica Astronomiae ; Vol. 2) Thun ; Frankfurt am Main : Deutsch, 1998; 2., korr. Aufl. 2002, 175 S., ISBN 3-8171-1569-5 (1. Aufl.), 3-8171-1690-X (2. Aufl.), Abb., 15 x 21 cm, kartoniert EUR 14,80 / sFr 23,10. Inhalt: (HTML ) (PDF )〕 In 1604, he entered the service of emperor Rudolph II in Prague. Here, he befriended Johannes Kepler. Bürgi constructed a table of sines (''Canon Sinuum''), which was supposedly very accurate, but since the table itself is lost, it is difficult to be sure of its real accuracy (for instance, Otho's Opus Palatinum had parts which were not as accurate as it was claimed). An introduction to some of Buergi's methods survives in a copy by Kepler; it discusses the basics of Algebra (or ''Coss'' as it was known at the time), and of decimal fractions. Buergi has also constructed a table of antilogarithms, printed in 1620 (but perhaps not published), but he did not objectivate the notion of a logarithmic function and cannot therefore be considered as an independent inventor or discoverer of logarithms. More important than his written legacy is the engineering achievement contained in his innovative mechanical astronomical models.〔''Jost Bürgi''; by Ludwig Oechslin; Publisher: Verlag Ineichen, Luzern, 2001, 108 p.〕 During his years in Praha he worked closely with the astronomer Johannes Kepler at the court of Rudolf II. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jost Bürgi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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