Maria Cunitz or Maria Cunitia (other versions of surname include: Cunicia, Cunitzin, Kunic, Cunitiae, Kunicia, Kunicka; 1610 – 22 August 1664) was an accomplished Silesian astronomer, and the most notable female astronomer of the early modern era. She authored a book Urania propitia, in which she provided new tables, new ephemera, and a simpler working solution to Kepler's second law for determining the position of a planet on its elliptical path. The Cunitz crater on Venus is named after her. The minor planet 12624 Mariacunitia is named in her honour.
Life
Birth place and family Maria Cunitz was born in Wohlau (now Wołów, Poland), as the eldest daughter of a Baltic German, Heinrich Cunitz, a physician and landowner who had lived in Schweidnitz for most of his life, and Maria Scholtz from Liegnitz, daughter of the German scientist Anton von Scholtz (1560–1622), a mathematician and counselor to Duke Joachim Frederick of Liegnitz.
Sources on her year of birth The year of Maria's birth is uncertain. No birth, baptism or similar documents have ever been located. The year was speculated about in the first major German-language publication about Maria Cunitz of 1798. Paul Knötel appears to be the first to give the year 1604 as the year of Maria's birth. This date is estimated to be accurate since her parents married the previous year. Other authors later appear to have repeated the same year. The proof that Maria was actually born in 1610 is furnished by an anthology with congratulation poems on her first wedding, in connection with a letter of Elias A Leonibus to Johannes Hevelius from the year 1651, noted by Ingrid Guentherodt. Full details concerning the family of Maria Cunitz have been published by Klaus Liwowsky.
Marriages and interest in science The family eventually moved to Schweidnitz in Lower Silesia (today Świdnica, Poland). At an early age of 13, Maria married (in 1623) the lawyer David von Gerstmann. After his death in 1626, she married (in 1630) Elias von Löwen, also from Silesia. Elias von Lowen was also known as Elie de Loewen. He was a physician at Pitschen and studied astronomy. Elias von Lowen was Maria's tutor and encouraged Maria to pursue astronomy before their marriage in 1630. Together they made observation of the planet Venus on 14 December 1627 and Jupiter in April 1628. Other areas of study that Maria was proficient in included medicine, poetry, painting, music, mathematics, ancient languages, and history. Elias and Maria had three sons: Elias Theodor, Anton Heinrich and Franz Ludwig.
War refugee in the Thirty Years' War During the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648 Maria and Elias von Löwen took refuge in the Cistercians convent of Olobok, Poland. They were of Protestant religion; her siblings, who stayed in Silesia, converted to Roman Catholicism. During the time Maria and Elias took refuge, Maria used her time to arrange a set of astronomical tables that were based on the Rudolphine Tables, which were written by Johannes Kepler. Cunitz expanded her astronomical tables to include all of the planets at any moment in time. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, the couple returned to their home at Pitschen in Silesia.
Self-published writer In 1650, Maria self-published on her own expense Urania propitia in German and Latin as a dedication to Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III. Urania propitia was a simplification of Kepler's Rudolphine Tables due to their difficulty of producing calculations and applications, because the use of logarithms.
Urania propitia
Urania propitia is one of the most well known and influential works created by Cunitz. Her cosmology, as exemplified in this work, was a variation of other great, early astronomers such as Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Urania propitia is a "large quarto with a large number of pages of tables that allows people to determine both the longitude and latitude of each of the planets, also along with other parameters." In this text she revised the complicated and errored calculations found in Kepler's Rudolphine Tables by creating simpler algorithms that reduced the room for human and mathematical error. However, Cunitz did omit small coefficients, leading to minimal errors in Urania propitia. Urania propitia was published in both Latin and German in order to increases its accessibility. Elias von Lowen, Maria's second husband, created the preface to Urania propitia. Elias wanted to make sure the reader of Urania propitia knew that the entirety of this work was exclusively Maria's own work. Elias also wanted to note that he had no part in writing Urania propitia, but he wanted to make clear the fact that he continuously supported his wife Maria. Urania propitia provided new tables, new ephemera, and a more elegant solution to Kepler's Problem, which is to determine the position of a planet in its orbit as a function of time. Today, her book is also credited for its contribution to the development of the German scientific language. Urania propitia did not have much of an impact on late 17th-century astronomy. A large contribution to this fact has to do with Cunitz publishing her work in an isolated printing establishment in Olesnica, and there were only a few copies of the Urania propitia made. No one really mentioned Urania propitia, except a mid-century Parisian astronomer named Ismael Boulliau. However, Boulliau "only commented on the Urania propitia and thought his work was better and more accurate than Cunitz's work." Urania is the Greek mythological muse of Astronomy while propitia is translated from Latin to "beneficent." This title follows the common theme of attributing a scientific success to a female muse, but also recognizes the connection between the muse and its female author. This statement title in early 17th century Germany, a time where recognized and accepted women scientists were few and far between, was a groundbreaking text that exemplified the abilities of women in science.
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