Life
Schickard was born in Herrenberg and educated at the University of Tübingen, receiving his first degree, B.A. in 1609 and M.A. in 1611. He studied theology and oriental languages at Tübingen until 1613. In 1613 he became a Lutheran minister continuing his work with the church until 1619 when he was appointed professor of Hebrew at the University of Tübingen.
Schickard was a universal scientist and taught biblical languages such as Aramaic as well as Hebrew at Tübingen. In 1631 he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Tübingen. His research was broad and included astronomy, mathematics and surveying. He invented many machines such as one for calculating astronomical dates and one for Hebrew grammar. He made significant advances in mapmaking, producing maps that were far more accurate than previously available.
He was, among his other skills, a renowned wood and copperplate engraver.
Wilhelm Schickard died of the bubonic plague in Tübingen, on 23 or 24 October 1635. In 1651, Giovanni Riccioli named the lunar crater Schickard after him.
Read more about this topic: Wilhelm Schickard
Famous quotes containing the word life:
““One thought in agony of strife
The bravest would have by for friend,
The memory that he chose the life ...””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Only man thinning out his kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life . . .”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)