Despite living shortly before the invention of the telescope, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe made a major contribution to European astronomy.
He was also, like many scientists of his era, a very shrewd and secretive alchemist. His castle, called Uraniborg, was equipped with observatories in its towers and an alchemy laboratory in the basement. The building was destroyed shortly after his death in 1601.
But few records of Brahe’s activities remain.
Danish scientists found traces of the materials Brahe worked with in glass and ceramic pieces on the now Swedish island of Ven, where Uraniborg once stood.
The pieces were discovered in a 1988–90 excavation and are believed to have belonged to the castle’s laboratory.
The researchers have published their findings in The Science of Heredity.
They used a technique called laser ablation inductively coupled mass spectrometry to analyze the fragments. This process involves blasting a sample with a laser, generating particles that are sent through a device called a mass spectrometer, which identifies compounds by their mass.
Study co-author Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, says the technique generated “very effective and surprising results”.
“Most intriguing are the elements found in higher concentrations than expected – indicating enrichment and providing insight into the substances used in Tycho Brahe’s alchemical laboratory,” says Rasmussen.
Rasmussen and colleagues have previously published several studies on Brahe’s remains, including data on what he and his wife ate and evidence that he probably did not die of mercury poisoning, despite the conspiracy theories that emerged almost immediately after his death.
In the new study, researchers found enriched traces of the elements nickel, copper, zinc, tin, antimony, tungsten, gold, mercury and lead in 4 of the pieces. A piece of glass had no alchemical trace.
Some of these elements, such as gold and mercury, are the mainstays of an alchemist’s laboratory. The researchers compared their findings with the scant writings about Brahe’s alchemical work. They suggest that some of these elements (copper, antimony, gold, and mercury) may be related to a drug made by Brahe called Tychonis elixir.
“It may seem strange that Tycho Brahe was involved in astronomy and alchemy, but when one understands his worldview, it makes sense,” says study co-author Poul Grinder-Hansen, curator at the National Museum of Denmark.
“He believed that there were obvious connections between heavenly bodies, earthly substances and the organs of the body. This is how the Sun, gold and heart were connected. The same is true of the Moon, silver, and the brain; Jupiter, tin and the liver; Venus, copper and kidneys; Saturn, lead and spleen; Mars, iron and the gall bladder; and Mercury, mercury and the lungs.”
Brahe was known to be interested in the medical applications of alchemy, writing that most alchemists who pursued the production of gold ended up wasting time, labor, and money.
Other elements present in ceramics are more strange.
“Tungsten is very mysterious. Tungsten had not even been described at the time, so what are we to conclude from its presence in a sherd from Tycho Brahe’s alchemy workshop? says Rasmussen.
It is possible that it entered there without Brahe noticing. But Rasmussen says there’s also a chance that Brahe had heard of work done by German scientist Georgius Agricola, who had identified tungsten as “wolfram” in tin ores during the early 16th century.
“But that’s not something we know or can say based on the analysis I’ve done. It’s just a possible theoretical explanation for why we find tungsten in the samples,” says Rasmussen.
Rasmussen is eager to see if he can glean more about Brahe’s activities by looking at other artifacts in the lab.
“Next I would like to analyze a new and larger set of fragments, perhaps 20 or 25, in order to capture more elements that may be present,” he says. Cosmos.
