Willem Janszoon Blaeu
History and Philosophy of Physics
2015-03-31 v1
Abstract
This article describes the life and work of Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638), who founded one of history's greatest cartographic publishing firms in 1599. Mostly renowned as a cartographer, he also made terrestrial and celestial globes, various instruments such as quadrants, a planetarium and a tellurium. He invented mechanical devices for improving the technics of printing. As an astronomer, a former student of Tycho Brahe, Willem Blaeu made careful observations of a moon eclipse, he discovered a variable star now known as P Cygni, and carried out a measurement of a degree on the surface of the earth (as his countryman Snell did in 1617).
Cite
@article{arxiv.1503.08327,
title = {Willem Janszoon Blaeu},
author = {Jean-Pierre Luminet},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.08327},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
5 pages. Published in Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, Thomas Hockey (ed.), 2014