Godegroy WendelinDied 24 Oct 1667 at age 87 (born 6 Jun 1580).Flemish astronomer and clergyman who was known as the Ptolemy of his time. Despite going against the tenets of his Church, he was an audacious proponent of the Copernican theory that the planets orbit around the sun. He made more accurate measurements of the distance to the sun as previously made by Aristachus (2,000 years earlier) from the geometrical relationships at the exact time of a half-moon. His result was a third smaller than now accepted, but still indicated the order of magnitude. From his studies the motion of a pendulum, he observed that as amplitude is increased, there is some increase the period of the swings. He noted a temperature effect on the period of a pendulum: more oscillations in winter than in summer. Wendelin is regarded as first to formulate a law for the variation of the obliquity of the ecliptic. Newton cited him in his Principia.«[Latinized name: Vendelinus. First name variations: Godefroid or Gottfried.] |
