Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/183

Rh scholar into exile, also vented itself on the world-renowned house which he had built for his science. A few years after Tyge Brahe had abandoned the Isle of Hveen, there remained scarcely a vestige of the proud Uranienborg observatory.

Tyge Brahe's ablest pupil was the peasant born (Longomontanus), who in his fifteenth year deserted the plow to become a student. During the last twelve years of Tyge Brahe's life he was his constant assistant, and accompanied him in his voluntary exile; but after Tyge's death he returned to Denmark, where he obtained a professorship and died in 1647. As a scholar he gained a considerable reputation through his publication of astronomical works, and this applies even in a higher degree to Ole Römer (1644-1710). This eminent man again gave a mighty impulse to astronomy and to kindred sciences, when after the death of Longomontanus they had for a time relapsed into their old grooves. He early devoted himself to mathematics, and during a ten years' sojourn in France (1671-1681) he gained for himself a European celebrity by his various mechanical inventions and scientific discoveries among which the most important is his calculation of the velocity of light (1675), which marks a new era in scientific research. On his return to Denmark he became professor of astronomy and he continued to his dying day to labor for the advancement of this science by making observations and in other ways, and he enriched it by many new and important discoveries. The numerous instruments which he devised and which he partly made himself, gave him the name of "The Danish Archimedes." Long after his death the observatory still possessed fifty-four of his instruments. The most of his observations were destroyed by the Copenhagen conflagration in 1728.

In the field of medicine and natural science Denmark had in this period several distinguished men. , who rendered special services to the study of Norse antiquities and