Fr christopher clavius biography cause of death

Christopher Clavius , SJ 25 March — 6 February [ 1 ] was a Jesuit German mathematician , head of mathematicians at the Collegio Romano , and astronomer who was a member of the Vatican commission that accepted the proposed calendar invented by Aloysius Lilius , that is known as the Gregorian calendar. Clavius would later write defences and an explanation of the reformed calendar, including an emphatic acknowledgement of Lilius' work.

Fr christopher clavius biography cause of death: Christopher Clavius, SJ (25

In his last years he was probably the most respected astronomer in Europe and his textbooks were used for astronomical education for over fifty years in and even out of Europe. Little is known about Christopher Clavius' early life, with the only certain fact being that he was born in Bamberg in either or Clavius joined the Jesuit order in He attended the University of Coimbra in Portugal , where it is possible that he had some kind of contact with the famous mathematician Pedro Nunes Petrus Nonius.

He was ordained in , and 15 years later was assigned to compute the basis for a reformed calendar that would stop the slow process in which the Church's holidays were drifting relative to the seasons of the year. Within the Jesuit order, Clavius was almost single-handedly responsible for the adoption of a rigorous mathematics curriculum in an age where mathematics was often ridiculed by philosophers as well as fellow Jesuits like Benito Pereira.

He used the decimal point in the goniometric tables of his astrolabium in and he was one of the first who used it in this way in the West. Clavius wrote a commentary on the most important astronomical textbook of the late Middle Ages, De Sphaera of Johannes de Sacrobosco. The commentary by Clavius was one of the most influential astronomy textbooks of its time and had at least 16 editions between and , with Clavius himself revising the text seven times and in each case greatly expanding it.