Of all the advantages that may be conferred by fortune, the advantage of birth is not the least. Tygge Brahe (1546–1601), Latinized as Tycho, was born into an ancient family of the Danish nobility whose members regularly served in the Council of the Realm, and unlike other artists and philosophers, he never stood hat in hand before the great. Where others could only beseech, he could demand, which he did, at times imperiously, through his turbulent life. He was raised by his uncle, who intended for him a career in the Danish administration, to which end, beginning in 1559, he attended universities in Copenhagen, Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Rostock, studying the liberal arts and law in preparation for a career he never wanted. For from an early age, his passion was astronomy, which he pursued in secret, educating himself from books and taking observations with improvised instruments. He found that neither the Alfonsine nor the Prutenic Tables were sufficiently accurate, something shown in particular by a great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1563 regarding which the former were in error by a full month and the latter by several days, following which he began to record his observations and seek improved instruments. In 1569, he settled for a year in Augsburg, where he made a pair of compasses 1.5 m in radius with a scale for measuring angles up to 30° and a gigantic wooden quadrant 4.5 m in radius that could, with difficulty, be rotated in azimuth for measuring altitudes in any vertical circle (Plate 3.1). He also read widely in astrology and carried out alchemical experiments, interests that he maintained for the rest of his life.