Background
Dasypodius was born in 1532, in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, the son of the Swiss humanist Petrus Dasypodius; his family name was Rauchfuss.
Astronomer mathematician scientist
Dasypodius was born in 1532, in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, the son of the Swiss humanist Petrus Dasypodius; his family name was Rauchfuss.
Dasypodius studied in Strasbourg at the famous academy of Johannes Sturm.
Dasypodius became professor in Strasbourg at the famous academy of Johannes Sturm in 1558. The greater part of his work was destined to be schoolbooks for his students: his editions of Euclid, his Volumen primum and Volumen secundum, and his protheoria with the Institutionum mathematicarum erotemata (in the form of questions and answers) demonstrate his pedagogical interests. These books show that in Strasbourg, under the influence of Sturm, mathematics was studied far more extensively than in many of the universities of the time. Worthy of special mention is his Analyseis geometricae (1566). This book, written with his teacher Christian Herlinus, contains the proofs of the first six books of Euclid’s Elements analyzed as their syllogisms; it was intended to facilitate the study of mathematics for students trained in dialectics.
Confident that the mathematics of his time was far below the Greek level, Dasypodius desired, as did many of his contemporaries (e.g., Commandino and Ramus), publication of all Greek mathematical works. Since he himself owned several manuscripts, he was able to make a beginning in that direction. He edited and translated works of Euclid (partly with and partly without proofs), some fragments of Hero, and (in his Sphaericae doctrinae propositiones) the propositions of the works of Theodosius of Bythinia, Autolycus of Pitane, and Barlaamo. His textbooks, too, show his knowledge of Greek mathematics.
Nothing is known of Dasypodius' family.