Mathematician:Petrus Apianus

Mathematician

German humanist and mathematician.

One of his books significantly appears in the painting The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Nationality

German

History

• Born: 16 April 1495, Leisnig, Saxony
• 1516 to 1519: Studied at the University of Leipzig
• 1526: Married Katharina Mosner, the daughter of a councilman of Landshut
• 1527: Appointed Professor of Mathematics at the University of Ingolstadt
• Died: 21 April 1552, Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany

Publications

• 1522: Typus orbis universalis (a world map)
• 1523: Isagoge (a commentary on Typus orbis universalis)
• 1524: Cosmographia seu descriptio totius orbis, also known as Cosmographicus liber (based largely on work by Claudius Ptolemy)
• 1527: Ein newe und wolgegründete underweisung aller Kauffmanns Rechnung in dreyen Büchern, mit schönen Regeln und fragstücken begriffen (a handbook of commercial arithmetic). This was the work depicted in the painting The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger. It is also notable for being the first work in published in Europe to include, which it did on its frontispiece, a depiction of Pascal's Triangle.
• 1532: Ein kurtzer bericht der Observation unnd urtels des jüngst erschinnen Cometen
• 1532: Quadrans Apiani astronomicus (on quadrants)
• 1533: Horoscopion Apiani (on sundials)
• 1533: Instrument Buch (a scientific book on astronomical instruments in German)
• 1534: Instrumentum primi mobilis (on trigonometry, contains sine tables)
• 1540: Astronomicum Caesareum

Also known as

Also known as Peter Apian.

Born as Peter Bienewitz (or Bennewitz), he Latinized his name (Biene is German and Apis is Latin for bee) while at Leipzig University.

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Petrus Apianus": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive