Prutenic Tables

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The Prutenic or Prussian Tables (Latin: Tabulae prutenicae, German: Prutenische oder Preußische Tafeln) of 1551 were astronomical tables that replaced the Alphonsine tables which had been used for 300 years.

The tables were created by Erasmus Reinhold who set out to re-calculate afresh a new set of astronomical tables, on basic parameters from Nicolaus Copernicus which were published in the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium of 1543.

Albert I, Duke of Prussia, supported Reinhold and financed the printing of Reinhold's Prussian Tables, named after the benefactor. These astronomical tables helped to disseminate the calculation methods of Copernicus throughout the Empire. Both Reinholds's Prutenic Tables and Copernicus' studies were used by Christopher Clavius as a basis for the calendar reform instituted under Pope Gregory XIII. The tables were also used by sailors and sea explorers, who during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had used the Table of the Stars by Regiomontanus.

Decades later, in Prague, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler compiled the Rudolphine Tables that were published by Kepler in 1627.

Owen Gingerich later found a copy of Copernicus' De revolutionibus which had been owned and annotated by Reinhold. This inspired him to inquire about The Book Nobody Read, and the role of Reinhold's tables.

[edit] Literature

Owen Gingerich, 'The role of Erasmus Reinhold and the Prutenic Tables in the dissemination of Copernican Theory', Studia Copernicana 6 (1973), 43-62;
'The accuracy of ephemerides 1500-1800', Vistas in Astronomy 28 (1985), 339-42;
'The Alphonsine tables in the age of printing', M. Comes et al. (eds) De astronomia Alphonsi Regis, Barcelona 1987, 89-95