Tycho Brahe was a man of many parts: duelist who lost much of his nose, his honor having been allegedly impugned by mockery of his astrological prediction of the death of a sultan already dead; Paracelsian medical chemist, busily poisoning himself and his friends with mercury; accomplished neo-Latin lyric poet; astronomer who combined bold speculations on the form of the world system with a monumental program for surveying the heavens; astrological consultant to the Danish royal family; aristocrat who flouted conventions by marrying a commoner; landlord who ruthlessly exploited his peasants (or so some of them complained); and builder of the mighty Uraniborg, at-once country manor, temple, museum, laboratory, and observatory.
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