Nasir al-Din Tusi's Zij-i Ilkhani published

1265

The Persian astronomer completed his monumental astronomical tables at Maragheh, synthesizing Greek, Indian, and Chinese observations with new measurements taken from the world's most advanced observatory. His non-Ptolemaic planetary models, particularly the Tusi couple, offered mathematical tools that later appeared in Copernicus's De Revolutionibus. Whether Copernicus knew Tusi's work directly or through intermediaries remains one of the great questions of the history of science.