Jørgen Dybvad

Who is Jørgen Dybvad?

Jørgen Dybvad, was a Danish theologian and mathematician of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

Jørgen was born to prosperous Yeoman stock in Dybvad in Gosmer Parish, Aarhus, and took the name of his place of birth.

Dybvad studied under Caspar Peucer and Sebastian Theodoricus at the University of Wittenberg. He later became a prominent scholar who wrote on astronomy, meteorology, and mathematics. He tended toward new, radically anti-Aristotelian ways of thinking. He was the first Dane to publish a commentary on Copernicus, and he had no trouble accepting the new star of 1572 as evidence of celestial mutability. However he was not a systematic astronomer. In astrology he merged the Ptolemaic approach with a contemporary tradition of historical chronology. He was also a Hebrew scholar.