Was This Renaissance Alchemist Ahead of His Time?

Tycho Brahe, a 16th-century Danish alchemist and astronomer, kept his methods close to his chest. Like other alchemists who mixed “medicines” of their own designs, Brahe had secret recipes that he perfected in a basement laboratory. He left little to no documentation of his methods, and today, more than 400 years after his death in 1601, his findings continue to mystify researchers.

Between 1988 and 1990, archaeologists discovered fragmented pottery, glass and other objects at the site of Brahe’s long-demolished mansion on the Swedish island of Ven. The house was named ​​Uraniborg, after Urania, the muse of astronomy. There, in his observatory, Brahe discovered a supernova in the Cassiopeia formation and irregularities in the moon’s orbit, long before the invention of the telescope in 1608.

Kaare Lund Rasmussen, an archaeometry expert at the University of Southern Denmark, and Poul Grinder-Hansen, a senior researcher and curator at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, recently analyzed some of the artifacts found at Uraniborg for a study published in the journal Heritage Science. Per the paper, four of the shards contain unusually high concentrations of elements like copper, zinc, nickel, tin, mercury, gold and lead.

None of these elements surprised the researchers. An alchemist working for elite members of society would have employed gold and mercury to combat a wide range of diseases. But the researchers found another element, too: a metal called tungsten.

“Tungsten is very mysterious,” says Rasmussen in a statement. “Tungsten had not even been described at that time, so what should we infer from its presence on a shard from Tycho Brahe’s alchemy workshop?”

The identified elements help paint a picture of Brahe’s methods. Because some were highly concentrated, the researchers know that Brahe was performing isotopic enrichment, in which “the relative abundance of the isotopes of a given element are altered,” according to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Committee. As for the presence of tungsten, the researchers are unsure whether Brahe knew what the element was.

It wasn’t until 1781—180 years after Brahe’s death—that tungsten was first identified as a new element. The metal occurs naturally in some minerals, so it’s possible that Brahe experimented with one of these substances, separating tungsten without realizing it.

Another potential explanation is that Brahe was in fact aware of what kind of metal he was making. In 1546, a German mineralogist named Georgius Agricola published a book describing an odd substance that formed when he attempted to smelt tin made from tin ore, reports CNN’s Ashley Strickland. This material, which Agricola named “wolfram,” was actually tungsten.

“Maybe Tycho Brahe had heard about this and thus knew of tungsten’s existence,” says Rasmussen in the statement. “But this is not something we know or can say based on the analyses I have done. It is merely a possible theoretical explanation for why we find tungsten in the samples.”

Moving forward, Rasmussen tells Cosmos’ Ellen Phiddian, he hopes to “analyze a new and larger set of shards, maybe 20 or 25, in order to catch more elements which might be present.” In recent years, the scientist has published studies of Brahe’s diet, cause of death and many other aspects of his life.

Though the main objective of many of his contemporaries was smelting gold, Brahe was more focused on curing diseases. In his lab at Uraniborg—on an island gifted to him by Frederick II of Denmark and Norway—the scientist created potions for the plague, leprosy, syphilis, fever and stomachaches.

“Today we can be a little skeptical about the effects of the Paracelsian medicines of the late 1500s, but at the time, it was high-tech and cutting edge,” Rasmussen tells CNN. (Paracelsus was a 16th-century physician who promoted the use of chemistry in medicine.)

Brahe’s “cure” for the plague was composed of more than 60 ingredients, including opium, metals, oils and snake meat. The concoction was supposedly requested by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II—a tale that testifies to the alchemist’s good reputation.

“It may seem strange that Tycho Brahe was involved in both astronomy and alchemy, but when one understands his worldview, it makes sense,” says Grinder-Hansen in the statement. “He believed that there were obvious connections between the heavenly bodies, earthly substances and the body’s organs.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.