Nationality German Name Caspar Peucer | Role Physician | |
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Academic advisors Erasmus Reinhold
Georg Joachim Rheticus Died September 25, 1602, Dessau, Germany Education Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg Fields Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine Notable students Tycho Brahe, Johannes Praetorius Academic advisor Erasmus Reinhold, Georg Joachim Rheticus | ||
Caspar Peucer (pronounced , [ˈbɔɪkɐ]; January 6, 1525 – September 25, 1602) a German reformer, physician, and scholar of Sorbian origin.
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Biography
Born in Bautzen, Peucer studied mathematics, astronomy, and medicine at the University of Wittenberg from 1540. In 1543, he became a lodger in the house of one of the most famous professors in Wittenberg, the theologian and humanist Philipp Melanchthon, whose daughter Magdalena he married in 1550. In 1554, he became professor of mathematics at the University of Wittenberg, and in 1560 professor of medicine, leading the Wittenberg faculty in that field. Until 1574, he also served several times as dean and rector. In spite of his medical profession — in 1570, he became even personal physician to the Elector of Saxony — he was, after the death of Melanchthon, one of the leading Protestants in Saxony.
In 1574 Peucer was officially charged with Crypto-Calvinism in an inter-Lutheran fight for power and put in jail in the famed Pleissenburg Fortress in Leipzig for twelve years. Released in 1586, he went to the Duchy of Anhalt, where he became Councillor and personal physician to the Prince of Anhalt.
He died in the capital of Dessau in 1602.
Works (incomplete)
He wrote on astronomy, geometry, and medicine, and edited some of Melanchthon's letters (1565 and 1570):