BornLucerne, Switzerland, circa1586–1588
Died Lucerne, Switzerland, 3 March 1657
Johann Cysat was a pioneer of telescopic astronomy and observed sunspots, comets, and nebulae using telescopes he constructed. Cysat, 1 of 14 children of Renward Cysat, an important civic leader in Lucerne, entered the Jesuit order as a novice in 1604. By 1611, he was a student of Christoph Scheiner at the Jesuit College of Ingolstadt, where he succeeded Scheiner as professor of mathematics and astronomy from 1616 until 1622. Cysat was Rector of the Jesuit College in Lucerne from 1623 to 1627, after which the order sent him to Spain before he returned to Ingolstadt in 1630. By the following year, Cysat moved to Innsbruck, where he served as the architect of the Jesuit College church, remaining as rector of the Jesuit College there from 1637 to 1641, in Eichstadt from 1646 to 1650, and then in Lucerne until his death.
Although many details of his astronomical work remain uncertain, Cysat did observe...
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Bolt, M. (2014). Cysat, Johann Baptist. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_323
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