Daniel Santbech was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 and astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

. He adopted the Latinized name of Noviomagus, possibly suggesting that he came from the town of Nijmegen, called Ulpia Noviomagus

Noviomagus

Noviomagus is a superficially Latinized Celtic placename containing the Celtic words noviios "new" and magos "field", "plain", then "market" '...

 Batavorum by the Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

.

In 1561, Santbech compiled a collected edition of the works of Regiomontanus

Regiomontanus

Johannes Müller von Königsberg , today best known by his Latin toponym Regiomontanus, was a German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, translator and instrument maker....

 (1436–1476), De triangulis planis et sphaericis libri quinque (first published in 1533) and Compositio tabularum sinum recto, as well as Santbech's own Problematum astronomicorum et geometricorum sectiones septem. It was published in Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

 by Henrich Petri and Petrus Perna.

Santbech's work consisted of studies on astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

, sundials, surveying

Surveying

See Also: Public Land Survey SystemSurveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of accurately determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points and the distances and angles between them...

, and levelling

Levelling

Levelling or leveling is a branch of surveying, the object of which is1) To find the elevation of a given point with respect to the given or assumed Datum.2) to establish a point at a given elevation with respect to the given or assumed Datum....

 for water courses. It also includes descriptions of astronomical instruments, information for navigators and geographers, and general information about astronomy in the first years after Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....

.

Santbech also studied the subject of gunnery

Gun

A gun is a muzzle or breech-loaded projectile-firing weapon. There are various definitions depending on the nation and branch of service. A "gun" may be distinguished from other firearms in being a crew-served weapon such as a howitzer or mortar, as opposed to a small arm like a rifle or pistol,...

 and ballistics

Ballistics

Ballistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...

 as a theoretic discourse as well as for the practical application of war, and utilized the foundations of geometry, with ample references to Euclid

Euclid

Euclid , fl. 300 BC, also known as Euclid of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, often referred to as the "Father of Geometry". He was active in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I...

 and Ptolemy

Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...

, in order to do so. Santbech seem not to have been aware of similar studies by Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia

Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia

Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia was a mathematician, an engineer , a surveyor and a bookkeeper from the then-Republic of Venice...

.http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/geometry/cat37.htm

Santbech's text included theoretical illustrations of trajectories

Trajectory

A trajectory is the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time. The object might be a projectile or a satellite, for example. It thus includes the meaning of orbit—the path of a planet, an asteroid or a comet as it travels around a central mass...

. These were depicted with abruptly acute angles and straight lines, allowing him to create a right-angled triangle from which ranges

Range (mathematics)

In mathematics, the range of a function refers to either the codomain or the image of the function, depending upon usage. This ambiguity is illustrated by the function f that maps real numbers to real numbers with f = x^2. Some books say that range of this function is its codomain, the set of all...

 were computed with the help of a table of sines

Trigonometric function

In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle. They are used to relate the angles of a triangle to the lengths of the sides of a triangle...

. Santbech was of course fully aware that a cannonball's

Round shot

Round shot is a solid projectile without explosive charge, fired from a cannon. As the name implies, round shot is spherical; its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the gun it is fired from.Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, but by the 17th century, from iron...

 true trajectory would not consist of a straight line and a sudden drop, but these depictions were meant to assist with mathematical calculations.

In 1651, Riccioli gave Santbech's name to the crater Santbech

Santbech (crater)

Santbech is a lunar impact crater that is located to the southeast of Mare Nectaris. It lies south-southwest of the prominent crater Colombo. About one crater diameter to the east-northeast is the smaller Monge. The terrain around the crater, although rugged in places, has been flooded by lava and...

 on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

.

External links

The Geometry of War Polybiblio: Regiomontanus, Johannes/Santbech, Daniel, ed. De Triangulis Planis et Sphaericis libri quinque. Basel Henrich Petri & Petrus Perna 1561

• Problematum astronomicorum et geometricorum sectiones septem (Full Latin Text)