Background
Maria Cunitz was the eldest daughter of Dr Heinrich Cunitz of Schweinitz, and the wife of Dr Elias von Loven, of Pitschen in Silesia-both of them men of learning and distinction.
Maria Cunitz was the eldest daughter of Dr Heinrich Cunitz of Schweinitz, and the wife of Dr Elias von Loven, of Pitschen in Silesia-both of them men of learning and distinction.
From Maria Cunitz' universal accomplishments she was called the " Silesian Pallas, " and the publication of her work, Urania propitia (Oels, 1650), a simplification of the Rudolphine Tables, gained her a European reputation. It was composed at the village of Lugnitz, close by the convent of Olobok (Posen), where, with her husband, she had taken refuge at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, and was dedicated to the emperor Frederick III. The author became a widow in 1661, and died at Pitschen on the 24th of August 1664. See A. G. Kastner, Geschichte der Mathematik, iv. 430 (1800); N. Henelii, Silesiographia renovata, cap. vi. p. 684; J. C. Eberti's Schlesiens wohlgelehrtes Frauenzimmer, p. 25 (Breslau, 1727); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Schimmelpfenning).
At an early age Maria married (in 1623) the lawyer David von Gerstmann. After his death in 1626, she married (in 1630) Dr. Elias von Löwen also from Silesia.