1543

Events in 1543 8

• 1497 – 1543 Hans Holbein the Younger Northern Renaissance · Germany Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1497 – 1543) was a German painter who became court painter to Henry VIII of England. His precise, psychologically penetrating portraits are the definitive images of the Tudor court.
• 1543 Archimedes' works published in print — Renaissance rediscovery Tartaglia and others bring him to European mathematics In 1543, Niccolò Tartaglia published the first printed Latin edition of several works of Archimedes including On the Equilibrium of Planes and On Floating Bodies. This sparked enormous interest among Renaissance mathematicians and engineers. Galileo Galilei later wrote that Archimedes was his greatest influence, calling him "superhuman." Johannes Kepler used Archimedean methods to compute the volumes of wine barrels. Isaac Newton and Leibniz both acknowledged Archimedes' method of exhaustion as the forerunner of their calculus.
• 1543 Copernicus — heliocentric model De revolutionibus: the Earth moves around the Sun In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), proposing that the Earth and planets orbit the Sun rather than the Earth being the centre of the universe. Copernicus had developed the theory over decades but held back publication until the year of his death. The book launched the Copernican Revolution — the most profound transformation in humanity's understanding of its place in the cosmos.
• 1543 Europeans arrive — guns and Christianity Portuguese traders reach Tanegashima In 1543 shipwrecked Portuguese traders landed on Tanegashima, introducing the matchlock firearm, which rapidly transformed Japanese warfare. Missionaries soon followed — Francis Xavier arrived in 1549 — bringing Christianity and a brief era of European trade and influence.
• 1543 – 1601 Orazio Vecchi Italian Renaissance composer Orazio Vecchi was an Italian composer best known for his L'Amfiparnaso, a comic madrigal cycle that anticipated opera. He was also a prolific composer of sacred music.
• 1543 – 1598 Philippe de Monte Franco-Flemish madrigal composer Philippe de Monte was one of the most prolific composers of madrigals and motets in the late Renaissance, serving as imperial Kapellmeister in Vienna for many decades.
• 1543 Vesalius describes the human nervous system First accurate mapping of nerves and brain As part of De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543), Vesalius produced the first accurate descriptions and illustrations of the human nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, and major nerves. He corrected Galen's long-standing errors and established the basis for neuroanatomy.
• 1543 Vesalius — De Humani Corporis Fabrica Modern human anatomy based on dissection In 1543, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels published De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body), the most detailed and accurate anatomical atlas ever produced. Based on his own dissections at the University of Padua, it corrected over 200 errors in Galen's ancient texts, which had been accepted for 1,400 years without question. Its 200+ woodcut illustrations, possibly produced in Titian's studio, set a new standard for scientific illustration. Published the same year as Copernicus's heliocentric theory, it marked the birth of modern medicine.