Valentinus Otho

Valentinus Otho or Valentin Otto (born around 1545-46 possibly in Magdeburg – April 8, 1603 in Heidelberg) was a German mathematician and astronomer.

Life

In 1573 he came to Wittenberg, proposing to Johannes Praetorius an approximation of Pi as $\pi \approx {\tfrac {355}{113}}$ (now known as milü, as named by its first discover, the Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi).

In 1575 he supported Georg Joachim Rheticus in his trigonometric tables. The next year they went to Kaschau in Hungary where Rheticus died. Thus, Otho inherited the De revolutionibus manuscript of Nicolaus Copernicus that Rheticus had published in 1543 in Nuremberg.

Otho became Professor for mathematics in Wittenberg, but when the rulers of Saxony did not support the tables, he moved to Heidelberg where Elector Friedrich IV sponsored the '’Opus Palatinum de Triangulis’’ in 1596.

Work

Opus Palatinum de Triangulis, 1596 (original manuscript available at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_1720 )
De triangulis globi sine angulo recto libri quinque

gollark: Oh, and actually some of the rest of how variables work.

gollark: * perfect and without flaw, apart from the AWFUL const syntax

gollark: Just use Lua. Lua can be sandboxed fairly easily.

gollark: Simply don't have sandbox escapes.

gollark: Thusly, sandboxing.

External links

Cantor, Moritz: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Mathematik 1550-1600 Kapitel 68
Hilfstein, Erna (1986). "Was Valentinus Otho a Professor at the Univ. of Heidelberg?" (PDF). Organon. 22-23: 221–225..

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