Rheita, Anton Maria Schyrlaeus

1. Dates

Born: Bohemia, 1597

Died: Ravenna, 1660

Dateinfo: Dates Certain

Lifespan: 63

2. Father

Occupation: Unknown

No information on financial status.

3. Nationality

Birth: Bohemia

Career: Bohemia, Germany part of the time, and possibly. Italy (but given the silence I do not list it)

Death: Ravenna, Italy

4. Education

Schooling: No University

Unknown.

5. Religion

Affiliation: Catholic

Catholic, a Capuchin (Franciscan). He was a priest and a member of the community of Capuchins at Rheita, Bohemia, until the Thirty Years War.

6. Scientific Disciplines

Primary: Astronomy

7. Means of Support

Primary: Church Life, Academia

Until around 1618, he was a Capuchin monk. He was only 21 at that time, but it seems quite unlikely that he suddenly deserted the order.

By the 1640s he was a philosophy professor at Trier.

It is unknown when or why he went to Ravenna.

8. Patronage

Type: None

9. Technological Involvement

Type: Instruments

Rheita describes his own invention, an eyepiece for a Keplerian telescope, which left the image reverted, in Oculus Enoch et Eliae (1645).

10. Scientific Societies

Memberships: None

Sources

1. According to the D.S.B. there are no secondary sources.

Compiled by:

Richard S. Westfall

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Indiana University

Note: the creators of the Galileo Project and this catalogue cannot answer email on geneological questions.