An Atypical Scientist

The 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was one of the most amazing figures in the history of science. Born in 1546 to a noble and wealthy family, Brahe’s passion for celestial bodies began during a solar eclipse he witnessed at the age of 13. In his adult life, he would go on to make the most accurate celestial observations of his time, precisely plotting the positions of nearly 800 stars, decades before the invention of the telescope in the early 1600s.

Tycho Brahe’s flamboyant lifestyle was the stuff of legends, far removed from most people’s stereotypical image of a stodgy scientist. When he was twenty, Tycho lost a large chunk of his nose in a duel with his cousin over who was the better mathematician. Proving mathematical conjecture with a sword was an option at the time, it seems. He would wear a brass nose prosthetic for the rest of his life, which would earn him ridicule from some fellow astronomers.

In 1575, Tycho was granted the island of Hven, off the coast of Sweden, by King Frederick. Tycho was essentially gifted a Medieval castle and received substantial funding to build an astronomical observatory. Guests to his extravagant island castle-observatory wrote that he had a dwarf as a jester and kept a tame elk as a pet. The castle at Hven was an extraordinary gift that speaks volumes about Tycho’s fame and influence during a time when European courts outbid each other to keep or poach the best scientists on the continent.

From Astronomy to Alchemy

At his observatory, Tycho tracked the visible heavenly bodies across their entire orbit. This was unlike his peers who made observations only at specific and unusual points in their orbits. His observations revealed flaws in the established models of the time, concluding that the moon orbits Earth and that the five known planets orbit the Sun. However, he never embraced Nicolaus Copernicus’ accurate model of the solar system, believing instead that everything orbited around Earth.

Another of Tycho’s most impressive accomplishments was his use of statistical information. He was one of the first people to repeat an observation or experiment to verify it — something that is taken for granted in modern science.

Lesser known, however, is his work as an alchemist. From his castle’s basement, Tycho pursued turning common metal ores into gold, although he was more focused on brewing secret medicines for elite clients. However, the specifics of Brahe’s alchemical pursuits have long been shrouded in mystery.

The covert nature of Renaissance alchemy meant that practitioners kept their knowledge closely guarded. Today, only a few of Tycho’s alchemical recipes survive. Uraniborg, his castle located on the island of Ven off the coast of Sweden, was demolished after Tycho’s death in 1601 by the new King of Denmark, Christian IV, who despised the scientist.

But recently, researchers analyzing glass and pottery shards from Uraniborg have uncovered new clues about Brahe’s secretive activities. The fragments, found during excavations between 1988 and 1992, were believed to originate from Brahe’s alchemical laboratory.

Uncovering Alchemy Mysteries Through Modern Chemistry

Kaare Lund Rasmussen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern Denmark, was intrigued by what these shards might reveal about Brahe’s alchemy. Alongside Poul Grinder-Hansen, senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, Rasmussen discovered higher than expected concentrations of certain elements. They identified significant nickel, copper, zinc, tin, mercury, gold, and lead in four of the five studied shards.

“Cross sections of the shards have been analysed for 31 trace elements by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma with Mass Spectrometry with the aim of detecting any traces of the chemical substances on the inside or outside of the shards used in the laboratory,” the researchers wrote in their study.

“Four of the elements found in excess on the exterior surfaces of the shards, Cu, Sb, Au, and Hg, are in accordance with the reconstructed recipes of the three Paracelsian medicines for which Brahe was famous—Medicamenta tria. This is the first experimental data casting light on the alchemical experiments that took place at Uraniborg 1580–1599.”

Gold was already linked to Tycho from previous studies. In 2016, Rasmussen’s team found excessive amounts of gold in Tycho’s remains, suggesting he might have used or ingested it. Another analysis from 1993, which examined pieces of hair from Tycho’s beard, collected when he was first disinterred from his Prague tomb in 1901, claimed to find high levels of mercury in the hairs.

At the time, gold and mercury saw heavy use in alchemy recipes. Tycho, inspired by the Swiss physician Paracelsus, used these heavy metals to make medicines against plague, leprosy, and syphilis. His remedies were complex, including over 60 ingredients. Besides mercury and gold, he would add opium, snake flesh, oils, herbs, and sulfates. Given the amount of gold found in Tycho’s remains, he most likely consumed his own medicines.

The biggest surprise came with the detection of tungsten, an element unknown to scientists of Brahe’s time. This discovery puzzled the researchers. Tungsten was first identified in the 18th century by Carl Wilhelm Scheele and later isolated by the d’Elhuyar brothers — over a century after Tycho’s death.

An alchemy lab

How tungsten appeared in Brahe’s lab remains a mystery. It’s possible Brahe unknowingly processed minerals containing tungsten, or he might have been influenced by German mineralogist Georgius Agricola, who described a similar substance in 1546.

It’s possible that anyone encountering tungsten ore might have tried to extract gold from it. Its heaviness and density are similar to the precious metal. However, this speculation should be treated with skepticism since Tycho Brahe explicitly distanced himself from alchemical attempts to create gold.

These new findings raise more questions than they answer, but they open the door to further exploration of Brahe’s alchemical work. Future analyses of additional samples may uncover more about this enigmatic scientist who bridged the worlds of astronomy and alchemy (the precursor to chemistry) in a quest to unlock the secrets of nature.

The findings appeared in the journal Heritage Science.