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 $\pi \approx {\tfrac {355}{113}}$ .

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

External links

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

Authority control	WorldCat Identities VIAF: 32726698 LCCN: no2009075326 GND: 115444483 SUDOC: 125987595

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