Piotr (PETER) Krüger (KRUEGER) (1580—1639) — GDANSK MATHEMATICIAN AND ASTRONOMER, JOHANNES HEVELIUS'S PRECEPTOR
The article
constitutes a biography and description of the activities of Peter Krüger, an
outstanding XVlI-century mathematician and astronomer from Gdansk.
He studied in Königsberg, Gdansk, Leipzig
and Wittemberg, where he was awarded the degree of Master of Philosophy on 23rd
September 1606. From 1607 until his death in 1639 he taught mathematics and
poetry at the Gdansk Gimnazjum (Grammar School), also acting as Gdansk town
surveyor and "calandariographer". During this period he published
several treatises on mathematics, astronomy, physics, geography, chronology and
calendariography, in which he demonstrated a knowledge of almost the whole of
the contemporary literature related to these subjects. The treatises served as
text-books for the subjects taught by him, thus demonstrating the high standard
of teaching in the Gdansk Grammar School.
Papers on trigonometry were amongst his
most important achievements. The treatise Synopsis trigonometriae...
(1612) was the first systematic lecture on plane and spherical trigonometry in
Poland. In Praxis trigonometriae logarithmicae (1634), devoted to the
uses of logarithmus in trigonometry, he was the first in the history of
mathematics to separate logarithms of number from those of trigonometric
functions. He was also the author of one of the first text-books on astronomy
in Poland — Doctrinae astronomiae sphaerica (1635).
Peter Krüger (Kruger proved to be an
outstanding preceptor. In the years 1627—1630 one of his pupils was Johannes
Hevelius, whom he encouraged to carry out astronomical studies, later serving
him with council and assistance. Apart from his pedagogical activities, he was
also engaged in practical studies of astronomy, for which purpose he carried
out numerous observations, also having built astronomical instruments and
sun-dials.
He was the first person in Poland to
accept the basic assumptions of Copernicus's theory and expressed this in
print. One of Kruger's important achievements was the accurate calculation of
the latitude of Gdansk. Other works by him which were of note, were his papers
on terrestrial magnetism, some of the first in Europe. In the years 1609—1639,
he published numerous calendars and forecasts, notable for their high
scientific standard. Peter Kruger maintained extensive correspondence with many
outstanding scholars (Jan Brożek, Johannes Kepler, Philip Müller, Martin Hortensius),
discussing with them the most essential contemporary problems in the field of
the exact sciences.
Translated
by Betty Przybylska
Strona Małgorzaty Czerniakowskiej
Małgorzata Czerniakowska, Gdańsk 2009