🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan20.234308.20564@athena.mit.edu> hbh@athena.mit.edu
 (Heidi Hammel) writes:
>[...]
>the word "violent" in connection with Tycho's disposition appears several
>times and he seemed like an all-around snooty guy: "... as he combined
>the irritability of a genius with the haughtiness of a medieval
>nobleman, continual quarrels were the result." 

I would add "eccentric" to the above description of Tycho Brahe.  Here are
some brief excerpts from "The Mechanical Universe: Mechanics and Heat, 
Advanced Edition" (Frautschi, Olenick, Apostol, Goodstein; Cambridge, 1986)
text about Tycho (I was just going to quote the part about the nose, but
the more I read it... well, you'll see...

		Tycho was a foul-tempered Danish lord who 
	tongue-lashed kings, tormented peasants, sported a silver
	nose (his own having been lost in a youthful duel over
	mathematics), and kept a clairvoyant dwarf as his court jester
	and a tame elk that got drunk one night, fell down stairs,
	broke a leg, and died.
	[...]
		At Uraniborg [Tycho's observatory], Tycho held court
	like a lord rather than a scholar.  He ate and drank excessively,
	and at odd moments would pop off his gleaming metal nose to
	rub ointment on what lay beneath.  When his feudal tenants
	complained of mistreatment, he tossed them into jail.
	[...]
		At a banquet, Tycho overdrank and then held back his
	water beyonds the demands of courtesy.  An acute urinary
	infection set in, and within 11 days Tycho died.

(pp. 432-433)

	Maybe eccentric is putting it mildly... :)



-- 
Jeff Foust                        Senior, Geophysics/Planetary Science, Caltech
jafoust@cco.caltech.edu   			   	 jeff@scn1.jpl.nasa.gov
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