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Wendelen, Govaart

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Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers

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Alternate Names

Godefridus Wendelinus; Wendelen, Godefried; Wendelen, Gottfried

Born Herck-la-Ville, (Belgium), 6 June 1580

Died Ghent, (Belgium), 24 October 1667

Godefried Wendelen demonstrated the uniformity of the precession of the equinoxes. He corrected numerous geographical longitudes and was the first to point out a solar parallax of 14 s. Wendelen also claimed to have discovered Kepler’s third law, 8 years before Kepler himself did so.

Wendelen was the son of Nicolas Wendelen and his second wife, Elisabeth Corneli. After having received his first education in Herck-la-Ville, Wendelen went to the Jesuit college at Tournai in 1595 and afterward to Louvain to continue his studies. He subsequently traveled to Marseilles (1599) and Rome (1600). In Digne, Wendelen taught mathematics for a year (1601), where he met Nicolas de Peiresc and Pierre Gassendi . From September 1604 until April 1612, he tutored the two sons of André Arnaud, Seigneur de Miravail and lieutenant general of the...

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Selected References

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  • Hallyn, Fernand (1998). “La cosmologie de Gemma Frisius à Wendelen.” In Histoire des sciences en Belgique de l’Antiquité à 1815, edited by Robert Halleux, pp. 145–168. Brussels: Crédit Communal.

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  • Huygen, F. (1980). Govaart Wendelen: Herk-de-Stad, 1580–1667. Gemeente, Herk-de-Stad.

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  • Jacques, Emile (1983). “Les dernières années de Godefroid Wendelen (Wendelinus) († 1667).” Lias 10: 253–271.

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  • Pelseneer, Jean (1976). “Wendelin (Vendelinus), Gottfried.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 14, pp. 254–255. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

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  • Silversyser, Florent (1932). “Les autographes inédits de Wendelin à la Bibliothèque de Bruges.” Annales de la Société scientifique de Bruxelles 52: 99–268. (This work contains Wendelen’s manuscript treatise Motus fixarum; Motus Solis; Motus Lunae; De systemate mundano [MS 526 D] and MS 526 A of the Bruges Library.)

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Fernand Hallyn & Cindy Lammens

Authors
  1. Fernand Hallyn
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  2. Cindy Lammens
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Science, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, USA

    Thomas Hockey

  2. University of California, Irvine School of Physical Sciences, Irvine, CA, USA

    Virginia Trimble

  3. Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Thomas R. Williams

  4. Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, USA

    Katherine Bracher

  5. York Univesity, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Richard A. Jarrell

  6. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Jordan D. Marché II

  7. University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    JoAnn Palmeri

  8. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniel W. E. Green

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Hallyn, F., Lammens, C. (2014). Wendelen, Govaart. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1456

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