Everything you wanted to know about Simon Marius and were too afraid to ask – now in English

Regular readers of this blog should by now be well aware of the fact that I belong to the Simon Marius Society a small group of scholars mostly from the area around Nürnberg, who dedicate some of their time and energy to re-establishing the reputation of the Franconian mathematicus Simon Marius (1573–1625), who infamously discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter literally one day later than Galileo Galilei and got accused of plagiarism for his troubles. Galileo may have discovered them first but Marius won, in the long term, the battle to name them.

Frontispiece of Mundus Iovialis Source:Wikimedia Commons

In 2014 the Simon Marius Society organised many activities to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the publication of his opus magnum, Mundus Jovialis (The World of Jupiter). Amongst other things was an international conference held in Nürnberg, which covered all aspects of Marius’ life and work. The papers from this conference were published in German in 2016: Simon Marius und seine Forschung (Acta Historica Astronomiae), (AVA, Leipzig).

Now after much effort and some delays the expanded translation, now includes the full English text of Mundus Jovialis, has become available in English: Simon Marius and his Research, Springer, New York, 2019.

The ebook is already available and the hardback version will become available on 19 August. I apologize for the horrendous price but the problem of pricing by academic publishers is sadly well known. Having copyedited the entire volume, which means I have read the entire contents very carefully I can assure you that there is lots of good stuff to read not only about Simon Marius but also about astronomy, astrology, mathematics, court life in the seventeenth century and other topics of historical interest. If you can’t afford a copy yourself try to persuade you institutional library to buy one! If your university library buys a copy from Springer then students can order, through the library, a somewhat cheaper black and white copy of the book.