Cornelius Gemma

Cornelius Gemma (1535-1578) was a Flemish physician and astronomer from Leuven, the son of cartographer and instrument-maker Gemma Frisius, who served as a professor of medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven. As an astronomer he observed the supernova of 1572 in Cassiopeia on November 9, two days before Tycho Brahe, identified the Great Comet of 1577 as superlunary, and published what is considered the first scientific illustration of the aurora in his 1575 work on the supernova. In medicine he published the first known illustration of a human tapeworm in 1552, and his major works synthesized medicine, astronomy, astrology and philosophy before his death in Leuven during a plague epidemic around 1578.