Marcin Bylica

Martin Bylica (* 1433 probably in Olkusz, Poland, † 1493 in Oven, Hungary) was a Polish astronomer and astrologer.

Life

Bylica had studied at the Cracow Academy. From about 1470 he was appointed court astronomer of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus and from 1490 also for a short time his successor Vladislav II.

He was a close associate and friend of the German Regiomontanus, as this worked in Hungary 1467-1471, and he supported this in the creation of various astronomical and trigonometric tables. This " Tabulae directionum " were mainly for astrological purposes, having been printed in the years 1490 to 1626 in eleven editions.

His estate of books and astronomical instruments bequeathed his Bylica Krakow alma mater. This discount was for its time such a comprehensive and significant, that on the day when he arrived at the university, the rector of all teachers, including the astronomer Leonard of Dobschütz, and all students, including Nicolaus Copernicus, no lessons were: Everyone should have the opportunity to visit the Bylica - estate. The estate belonged to, inter alia, Regiomontanus a codex, a work of the astronomer Georg von Peuerbach, the teacher of Regiomontanus, and a book by the Italian scholar and astronomer Giovanni de Dondi, the inventor and builder of the first astronomical clocks, the so-called " Astrarium ".