Georg Joachim Rheticus (born Georg Joachim Iserin, later Georg Joachim de Porris and Georg Joachim von Lauchen; 16 February 1514 - 4 December 1574) was an Austrian-born mathematician, astronomer, cartographer, and physician. He is known primarily as the only student of Nicolaus Copernicus and as the figure most responsible for bringing Copernicus's heliocentric theory into print, and secondarily for his pioneering work in trigonometry. His career was interrupted in 1551 by a sodomy charge in Leipzig that ended his university appointments. For background on the broader theory he helped publish, see Heliocentrism - History.
Rheticus was born in Feldkirch in the Archduchy of Austria to parents of Italian heritage, his father serving as town physician and a government official. His father was beheaded in 1528 after conviction on a charge of sorcery, after which the family's surname could no longer be used, and his mother reverted to her maiden name, de Porris. Rheticus later adopted the name “Rheticus,” a Latinized reference to Rhaetia, the Roman province encompassing his home region.
With the support of his mentor Achilles Gasser and a letter of introduction to Philipp Melanchthon, Rheticus studied at Wittenberg, where he received his M.A. in 1536, after which Melanchthon appointed him professor of lower mathematics, arithmetic, and astronomy. In 1538, Melanchthon arranged a leave of absence for him to visit leading astronomers, a journey that brought him into contact with figures such as Johannes Schöner and the printer Johannes Petreius in Nuremberg. Schöner is believed to have persuaded Rheticus to travel to Frombork to meet Copernicus, of whose unpublished heliocentric outline he had heard.
Rheticus arrived in Frombork in 1539 and studied with Copernicus for two years. He published the first public account of the Copernican system, the Narratio Prima, in 1540, three years ahead of Copernicus's own De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. He encouraged Copernicus to complete and release his major work, and personally carried the manuscript to Nuremberg for publication, though he moved to a new appointment at Leipzig in 1542 before the book was actually printed. Historians of science widely regard Rheticus's intervention as decisive to the publication and survival of De revolutionibus; the question of how much credit he deserves relative to Copernicus and to the book's eventual editor, Andreas Osiander, is treated on rheticus-role-in-de-revolutionibus-publication-debate.
In 1551, while serving as professor of mathematics at Leipzig, Rheticus was accused of sodomy by a local merchant, Hans Meusel, on behalf of his son, a student of Rheticus's. Rather than stand trial under a legal code that prescribed death by fire for the offense, Rheticus fled Leipzig before proceedings began. He was found guilty in his trial in absentia and was exiled from Leipzig for 101 years, with his possessions impounded, and he lost the support of longtime benefactors, including Melanchthon. Accounts differ on the precise nature of the encounter and the reliability of the surviving record; see rheticus-leipzig-sodomy-charge-controversy.
After the scandal, Rheticus never again held a university post. He studied medicine at the University of Prague in 1551-52 and in 1554 settled in Kraków, where he practiced medicine for two decades while continuing independent astronomical and trigonometric work, supported in part by patrons including the bishop of Warmia, Johannes Dantiscus. His major mathematical project, a comprehensive set of trigonometric tables, was unfinished at his death in Kassa (now Košice) in 1574 and was completed and published posthumously by his student Valentin Otho as the Opus Palatinum de Triangulis (1596).