Daniel Santbech (

fl. ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...

1561) was a Dutch

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

and

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...

. He adopted the Latinized name of Noviomagus, possibly suggesting that he came from the town of

Nijmegen Nijmegen ( , ; Nijmeegs: ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and the ninth largest of the Netherlands as a whole. Located on the Waal River close to the German border, Nijmegen is one of the oldest cities in the ...

, called ''Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum'' by the Romans. In 1561, Santbech compiled a collected edition of the works of

Regiomontanus Johannes Müller von Königsberg (6 June 1436 – 6 July 1476), better known as Regiomontanus (), was a mathematician, astrologer and astronomer of the German Renaissance, active in Vienna, Buda and Nuremberg. His contributions were instrument ...

(1436–1476), ''De triangulis planis et sphaericis libri quinque'' (first published in 1533) and ''Compositio tabularum sinum recto'', as well as Santbech's own ''Problematum astronomicorum et geometricorum sectiones septem''. It was published in

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

by Henrich Petri and Petrus Perna. Santbech's work consisted of studies on

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

, sundials,

surveying Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the land, terrestrial Plane (mathematics), two-dimensional or Three-dimensional space#In Euclidean geometry, three-dimensional positions of Point (geom ...

, and

levelling Levelling or leveling (American English; see spelling differences) is a branch of surveying, the object of which is to establish or verify or measure the height of specified points relative to a datum. It is widely used in geodesy and cartogra ...

for water courses. It also includes descriptions of astronomical instruments, information for navigators and

geographers A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" ...

, and general information about astronomy in the first years after

Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath who formulated a mathematical model, model of Celestial spheres#Renaissance, the universe that placed heliocentrism, the Sun rather than Earth at its cen ...

. Santbech also studied the subject of

gun A gun is a device that Propulsion, propels a projectile using pressure or explosive force. The projectiles are typically solid, but can also be pressurized liquid (e.g. in water guns or water cannon, cannons), or gas (e.g. light-gas gun). So ...

nery and

ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets and the like; the science or art of designing and acceler ...

as a theoretic discourse as well as for the practical application of war, and utilized the foundations of geometry, with ample references to

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

and

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

, in order to do so. Santbech seem not to have been aware of similar studies by Niccolò Fontana Tartagliabr>
Santbech's text included theoretical illustrations of trajectory, trajectories. These were depicted with abruptly acute angles and straight lines, allowing him to create a right-angled triangle from which ranges were computed with the help of a table of sines. Santbech was of course fully aware that a

cannonball A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a lar ...

's true trajectory would not consist of a straight line and a sudden drop, but these depictions were meant to assist with mathematical calculations. In 1651, Riccioli gave Santbech's name to the crater Santbech on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

References

*Andreas Kleinert: Zur Ballistik des Daniel Santbech. In: Janus 63 (1976), pp. 47–59. n German

External links

The Geometry of War

* ttps://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.06.0023;layout=;loc=1;query=toc ''Problematum astronomicorum et geometricorum sectiones septem''(Full Latin Text at Perseus Project) ***Link Dead as of July 2021 {{DEFAULTSORT:Santbech, Daniel 16th-century Dutch astronomers 16th-century Dutch mathematicians Ballistics People from Nijmegen