1511-1553

German astronomer and mathematician who calculated the Tabulae Prutenicae (1551)—the first practical set of planetary tables based on Nicolaus Copernicus's theory. More accurate than the Alfonsine Tables, Reinhold's tables were widely adopted and provided a strong argument in favor of Copernicanism. Reinhold's focus on Copernicus's mathematical modeling and silence regarding the physical reality of heliocentrism—the notion that Earth revolved around the Sun, not vice versa—encouraged a similar attitude in German astronomers that persisted, long after his death from the plague, into the late sixteenth century.