Johannes Muller von Konigsberg, known as Regiomontanus from the Latinized name of his birthplace, was born on 6 June 1436. At the age of eleven he was sent to the University of Leipzig (est.1409) to study dialectics. Three years later he went to the University of Vienna (est.1365) and became a pupil of the astronomer Georg von Peurbach (1423-1461).
Peurbach showed him inaccuracies in the Alfonsine Tables and in the Latin translations of the Arabic translations of the works of the Greek astronomers. Together they observed the planet Mars two degrees off the place assigned to it and a lunar eclipse over an hour later than that given in the tables.
Cardinal Johannes Bessarion (1403-1472) was a scholar and Greek speaker who had a mission to promote classical Greek works in Europe. In 1460 he arrived in Vienna and persuaded Peurbach and Regiomontanus to provide an abridgment of the Almagest. When Peurbach died in 1461, Regiomontanus went with Bessarion to Rome and finished the work in 1463 (it was printed as the Epitome of the Almagest in 1496).
In 1467 Regiomontanus left Rome to accept an invitation to work at the court of the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus (47; r.1458-90). Regiomontanus was appointed to the recently founded Royal Library in Buda where he calculated extensive astronomical tables and built astronomical instruments.
In 1471 he moved to Nuremberg, where the merchant Bernhard Walther (1430-1504) provided the means for an instrument shop, observatory and a printing press on which the first scientific publications were to be produced. Regiomontanus’ first publication was New Theory of the Planets by his former teacher Peurbach and next, in 1474, his own calendar Calendarium and his Ephemerides for the years 1474-1506.
In 1475 he was called back to Rome to work with Pope Sixtus IV (70; r.1471-84) on calendar reform. Regiomontanus died in Rome on 6 July 1476, probably a victim of the outbreak of plague which occurred after the Tiber overflowed its banks in January 1476.
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