Tycho Brahe

Born in a circle of high nobility in the country of Denmark--then an expansive empire which bled into modern Sweden and Norway--Tyge, known more commonly by the latinised version, Tycho, Brahe was born in 1546 on the 14th of December. Jørgen Thygesen Brahe, brother of Tycho's father Otto, raised the young astronomer, educating him as preparation for being his heir. 

Tycho attended several universities, including ones in Wittenberg--where, in 1566, he lost the tip of his nose in a duel, leaving him to using a metallic replacement for the rest of his life--Rostock, Basal, Copenhagen, and Leipzig, his travels around the Germanic area and academia piquing interests in the celestial realm. Alchemy and astronomy caught his eye, his new impulses leading him to observe the cosmos upon his return to Denmark in 1570. 

A precursor to Brahe's claim to fame as documenter of the stars, he discovered a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia, writing about it in 1573 (a year after his find) before taking a job at the University of Cophenhagen lecturing on the science of the stars. A firm believer of the Aristotelian belief of an unchanging celestial sphere due to lack of parallax, he felt as though astronomy could be improved through accurate observations. 

Following another tour of the Germanic states, meeting up with various astronomers, King Frederick II funded Brahe's observatory on the island of Hven. Uraniburg, as it was named, stood as the best observatory of the time, housing newly innovated and calibrated instruments to aid Brahe in his extensive night time observations. There, he trained a new generation of budding astronomers before leaving Denmark after a dispute with King Christian IV. 

He became the Imperial Mathematician of the court of Emperor Rudolph II, settling in Prague to still continue his observing and training. Johannes Kepler, who developed the laws of planetary motion using Brahe's data years after his mentor's death, served as his assistant. At the age of 50, Brahe died on October 24th of 1601, suffering an exploded bladder following a banquet he attended in Prague, valuing party etiquette over basic human need for urinary relief. 

Several of his observation books survived, schooling future generations of the placement of objects in the heavens, which he described as moving in orbits. In 1572, he discovered a supernova--that being the new star in Cassiopeia--and created a geo-heliocentric universe (which his assistant later proved to be a solely heliocentric universe).