Thomas Digges was an English engineer, soldier, mathematician and astronomer who was the first to expound the Copernican system in English and to postulate the "dark night sky paradox."
Background
Thomas Digges was born c. 1546 in Kent, England. He was the son of Leonard Digges of Wotten, the mathematician and surveyor, and his wife, Bridget Wilford, the daughter of Thomas Wilford, esquire, of Hartridge in Cranbrook, Kent. Digges had two brothers, James and Daniel, and three sisters, Mary, who married a man with the surname of Barber; Anne, who married William Digges; and Sarah, whose first husband was surnamed Martin, and whose second husband was John Weston.
Education
Digges received his mathematical training from his father, who died when Thomas was young, and from John Dee.
Career
Digges was the leader of the English Copernicans. In 1576 he added “A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes” to his father’s Prognostication. This contained a translation of parts of book I of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus and Digges’s own addition of a physical, rather than a metaphysical, infinite universe in which the fixed stars were at varying distances in infinite space. He had already published his Alae seu scalae mathematicae (1573), containing observations on the new star of 1572 that were second only to those of Tycho Brahe in accuracy. Digges hoped to use these observations to determine whether the Copernican theory was true or needed further modifications, and he called for cooperative observations by astronomers everywhere.
In addition to his astronomical work Digges included a thorough discussion of the Platonic solids and five of the Archimedean solids in his father’s Pantometria (1571). He also published Stratioticos (1579), a treatise on military organization with such arithmetic and algebra as was necessary for a soldier. To this work he appended questions relative to ballistics that were partially answered in the second editions of Stratioticos (1590) and Pantometria (1591).
Digges was a member of the parliaments of 1572 (which met off and on for ten years) and 1584 and became increasingly active in public affairs. He was involved with plans for the repair of Dover harbor for several years and served as muster master general of the army in the Low Countries. Apart from his continuing studies in ballistics, his scientific writings cover only a decade; and his promised works on navigation, fortification, and artillery never appeared.
His military career was with the English forces in the Netherlands from 1586 to 1594. The modern state of the Netherlands came into existence with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1579. This was the year Digges wrote his military work Stratioticos which he dedicated to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Dudley was named governor-general of the Netherlands in 1586 and Dudley appointed Digges to be master-general of his army to assist him in the campaign.
Digges died on August 24, 1595. His last will, in which he specifically excluded both his brother, James Digges, and William Digges, was proved on September 1, 1595.