Sophie Brahe, Horticulturalist, Astronomer, Chemist, Genealogist and Sister to Tycho

Sophie Brahe, linocut 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2025

Born in either 1556 or 1559,  the 12th child (9 survived infancy) of Otte Brahe, advisor to the Danish king Frederick II, and Beate Bille Brahe, leader of Queen Sophie’s royal household, in Knudstrup Castle, Sophie Brahe was a horticulturalist, astronomer, chemist, and genealogist. At least a decade her senior and adopted and raised by his uncle Jørgen Thygesen Brahe, Sophie did not grow up with brother, the famous astronomer Tycho but the two became close when she reached adolescence. They found they were alike, sharing a determination to pursue science despite their family’s attitude this was an unsuitable activity for an aristocrat. Eventually they also shared a determination to each marry for love without regard for financial concerns or familial approval. They married a commoner and penniless noble respectively. 

Sophie married Otto Thott in 1579 and they two had a son, Tage Thott in 1580, but Otto died in 1588. As a widow, Sophie was responsible for maintaining and running the estate (now known as Trolleholm Castle in Eriksholme) until her son came of age. She studied chemistry, medicine and horticulture, growing medicinal plants and an exceptional garden. Following the theories of Paracelsus, she produced medicines to treat the poor, but as a woman, she could not formally study medicine.  

She became a regular visitor to her brother’s astronomical and alchemical laboratory, first at Herrevad Abbey and then later at Uranienborg, on the island of Hven. Tycho trained her in horticulture and chemistry but initially discouraged astronomy, but she pursued it on her own. She taught herself with textbooks in German and texts she had translated at her own expense from Latin. Even if he initially thought she might have the skills and education to pursue astronomy, he realized she could help him with his observations. With time he realized she had the skills she needed, to the point that he eventually, when he was often absent from 1588 to 1597, he started to delegate his duties to her, getting her to calculate the astrological charts which were the bread and butter of Renaissance astronomers. 

Specifically she made observations for Tycho on 11 November 1572, which led to the discovery of the supernova that is now called SN 1572, as well as a lunar eclipse in 1573 while still a girl. Tycho published De nova stella, or On the New Star about the supernova; the stars in my portrait are based on De nova stella and SN 1572 is the large star above Sophie’s head. The discovery of supernova was important to the ongoing revolution in astronomy as an observable change in the sky seemed counter to the prevailing geocentric model of the universe. Sophie was instrumental to Tycho’s meticulous observations of planetary orbits. Tycho developed instrumentation that allowed the most precision observations ever made prior to the invention of the telescope; Sophie, along with some other assistants, used these to make measurements. The incredible dataset proved invaluable to Kepler and lead to his laws of planetary motion, an important precursor to Newton’s law of universal gravitation. 

While at Uranienborg, she met Tycho’s friend, the alchemist Erik Lange. Lange's sister was married to another Brahe brother, so they had a family connection as well. Tycho trusted Erik to the extent that he made him the executor of his children's estate. Sophie returned to visit Erik over a dozen times and the two became engaged in 1590. Lange’s passion for alchemy had bankrupted him; he was obsessed with trying to produce gold from base metals. Sophie stood by him and financially supported his efforts after he used up his own fortune. Their wedding was delayed for years when Lange had to flee to Germany to avoid his creditors. The 600-line epic poem “Urani Titani” was published in 1594, as the love letters between Sophie as Urania, the muse of astronomy and Erik as a titan, studying alchemy abroad, written from Sophie’s point of view. The printer thought she was the author, but Tycho later claimed it. It seems likely he was either author, or at minimum translator and interpreter of Sophie’s thoughts, as Sophie was not fluent in Latin and Tycho was more likely to have known of its unusual poetic form. The poem denounces the futile search for the philosophers’ stone and promotes instead allegiance to Phoebus, god of healing. This shows the closeness of the two siblings, his respect for her as an astronomer, and that they likely both doubted that alchemy could produce gold. Nonetheless, Sophie was devoted to Erik and supported his research. 

She was able to visit Lange in Hamburg in 1599 but the two were not able to wed until 1602 in Eckernförde, where the couple lived in extreme poverty. Sophie complained to her sister that she had to wear stockings with holes in them to her own wedding and the groom needed to return his wedding clothes to the pawn broker after the wedding. She also complained of the family’s objections to her pursuit of science and their failure to pay money she was owed. She was often allow as he fled due to his debts. Even jewellery and clothes her sisters gave her out of pity were hawked to support his alchemical research. Erik had moved to Prague by 1608, where he died in 1613.

After Erik’s death, she regained enough wealth to fund repairs to the church at Ivetofta near where Frederick II had previously granted her the nearby manor of Årup. She nonetheless moved to Zealand and settled in Helsingør in 1616 where he son Tyge Thott had become a State Councillor. There she pursued her studies of horticulture and healing plants, teaching her servant all she knew of botany and healing. Despite any disdain she felt about the social norms of the aristocracy, she produced a genealogy of the Brahe family in 1600 and by 1626 she published a 900 page genealogy of 60 Danish noble families, still considered a major source for the history Danish nobility. Even in her 80s she was receiving visitors who came to see her famous gardens. She died in 1643 and is buried in the village of Torrlösa in the Thott family chapel, which is now part of Sweden.

References

Alenius, Marianne, The Honey-Sweet Delicacies of the Muses,  The History of Nordic Women's Literature,  July 27, 2011

Murray, Caroline, Sister of the more famous Tycho, Professor Hedgehog’s Journal,  September 10, 2018

Neill, Crystal, Sophie Brahe: Tycho’s Urania, on Before Newton: Explorations of pre-modern science, medicine and technology blog, accessed January, 2025

Sophie Brahe, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025.

Tycho Brahe, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2025.

Wentrup, Curt. Chemistry, Medicine and Gold-Making: Tycho Brahe, Helwig Dieterich, Otto Tachenius, and Johan Glauber, Chem Plus Chem, Volume 88, Issue 1, 24 November 2022 https://doi.org/10.1002/cplu.202200289

Sophie Ottesdatter Brahe, www.skbl.se/sv/artikel/SophieBrahe, Svenskt kvinnobiografiskt lexikon (article by Sara Griberg), retrieved 2025-01-07.

Hoyrup, Else. Sophie Brahe, on Grandma Got STEM blog, July 22, 2013, accessed January, 2025.

Rönneus, Maria Yrsa, Urania Titani: Sofie Brahe, guest post on Samantha Wilcoxson Blog, March 29, 2024, accessed January 2025.

More Invertebrate Prints

 

Motyxia sequoia, linocut, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

Motyxia are blind, bioluminescent, cyanide-producing millipedes known as Sierra luminous millipedes  from the southern Sierra Nevada, Tehachapi, and Santa Monica mountain ranges of California. I made this print for #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt "eyeless." My hand-printed linocut is printed in both regular and glow-in-the-dark ink so like Motyxia sequoia itself, the prints glow-in-the dark! Each print is on 8" x 8" cream coloured Japanese washi paper with bark inclusions.

Motyxia sequoia, glowing in the dark, linocut 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

These millipedes grow to 3 to 4 cm in length, 4.5 to 8 mm wide, with 20 body segments, excluding the head. Like other polydesmidans ("flat-backed" millipedes) they lack eyes and have prominent paranota (lateral keels). They are typically tan to orange-pink in colour with a dark mid-dorsal line;  they are fluorescent under black light and bioluminescent.

Diving Beetle Paroster pallescens, linocut, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This is a hand-printed of the Paroster pallescens beetle, surface diving water beetle from Australia. It is printed on 8" x 8" Japanese paper. I made this print for the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt diver.

I decided I should finally make an actual edition of my fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Drosophila melanogaster, 9" x 12" linocut by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This linocut print highlights the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly or vinegar fly. A hind-printed ring with 5 of the different eye colour genetic mutations appear on lovely handmade Japanese washi paper with flecks of bark inclusions. Each print is 9" by 12" (22.9 cm by 30.4 cm).

A species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae, D. melanogaster is used as a model organism for biological research in genetics, physiology, microbial pathogenesis, and life history evolution.  It breads quickly, has only four pairs of chromosomes, and is easy to raise in the lab anywhere in the world. It's also a well-known pest in kitchens worldwide!

Deep Sea Invertebrates

 

Vampire Squid, linocut, 9.25" x 12.5", by Ele Willoughby, 2024 

For the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt bathyal I made a linocut vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis). The 'vampire squid from hell' is a small deep sea cephalopod  found throughout temperate and tropical oceans with two long retractile filaments, located between the first two pairs of arms on its dorsal side, unlike either octopuses or squids. Though most closely related to octopods it is the only surviving memeber of its own order Vampyromorphida. It survives in the deep sea thanks to bioluminescent organs and its unique slow oxygen metabolism.

It is up to 30 cm long and has a webbing of skin connecting its eight arms, each lined with rows of fleshy spines or cirri. It can be a range of colours but lacks the sort of colour-changing ability of some cephalopods; it is however, covered in photophores which allow it to produce disorienting flashes of light in its ligtless (aphotic) environment, 600 m to 3300 m below the surface. It can also eject a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light from its arm tips if agitated, coating predators in glowing ink. Its eyes are disproportionately large. Its ear-like fins protruding from the mantle are the adults main means of propulsion. Despite its name it feeds on detritus, not blood.

Dumbo Octopus, linocut 9.25” by 12.5” by Ele Willoughby, 2024

For the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt abyssal I made this lino block print of a charming Grimpoteuthis octopus, one of a genus of pelagic cirrate (finned) octopods known as the dumbo octopuses. The fins reminded scientists of ears on the elephant in Disney’s 1941 film Dumbo. Hence their common name dumbo octopuses. 

It's believed dumbo octopuses have a worldwide distribution, living in the cold, abyssal depths ranging from 1000–7000meters and they have even been observed at hadal depths.

Headless Chicken Monster, 8" x 8" linocut print by Ele Willoughby, 2024

For the #InsertAnInvert2024 prompt hadal, I made this lino block print of the headless chicken monster! A strange-looking sea cucumber called Enypniastes eximia, the swimming sea cucumber or the pink see-through fantasia. It is printed by hand on delicate 8" x 8" Japanese mulberry paper. Their swimming fin allows them to move up 1 km in the water column to avoid predators or find new feeding ground. The semi-transparent 11 to 25 cm long, benthic, bulbous creatures with bifurcated tentacles, large anterior sail and visible intestines go from light pink to reddish-brown as they age. They can also be bioluminescent. They feed on benthic sediments during brief forays onto the seafloor. These animals can be found at extreme depths including an observation at 5,775 m in the Marianas Trench.

Maude Delap and the Lifecycle of the Jellyfish for Ada Lovelace Day 2024

Ada, Countess Lovelace, 3rd edition linocut by Ele Willoughby 

It is once again Ada Lovelace Day, the 15th annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology, science and math, Ada Lovelace Day 2023 (ALD23). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging.

 

You can find my previous Ada Lovelace Day posts here.

Maude  Delap, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This year for Ada Lovelace Day I thought I would write about a woman outside of academic science who lived far from centres of learning:  self-taught trail-blazing Irish marine biologist Maude Jane Delap (1866 – 1953)* who was the first person to successfully breed jellyfish in captivity and document their full lifecycle, something extraordinarily hard to do. To this day, her work is still cited in laboratory manuals for jellyfish rearing. She also discovered a sea anemone named in her honour, Edwardsia delapiae. She became a respected independent research scientist despite her distance from universities and research institutions, making an extensive study of plankton over many years from her remote location on Valentia Island offshore Ireland's west coast. Further, she did this despite society's and specifically her father's attitudes about the roles of women. In my portrait she is surrounded by different stages in the blue jellyfish (Cyanea lamarckii) based on her own illustrations of her published research.

Born the seventh of ten children to Rev Alexander Delap and Anna Jane (née Goslett) in Templecrone Rectory, County Donegal, Maude moved with her family to Valentia Island at age 8. Her father had been assigned to the parishes of Valentia and Cahersiveen, and, a keen sailor, he sailed around the coast with two of her brothers. Their possessions, following in a second boat, arrived a little worse for wear. Her mother and the rest of the children travelled by train. While the girls had less formal education than their brothers, they had some progressive primary school education and their naturalist father encouraged Maude and her sister Constance (1868–1935) in their interest in biology and zoology. He himself had published articles in the Irish Naturalist and the whole family were avid naturalists. Maude and Constance became prolific collectors of marine specimen, many of which are still housed by the Natural History Museum, Dublin. Maude and her sister got reports from visiting fishermen of interesting species in all the their catch, for which they would pay a few shillings, encouraging what is now often known as "citizen science" or "community science" (to avoid the political overtones of the word "citizen").  They were sometimes invited aboard to observe finds and jellyfish. Since the family enjoyed boating and fishing, Maude and Constance learned how to handle a boat and would row out alone, exploring the coast and caves. The Fisheries Board granted them part-time access to their steam boat for their research.

The sisters' work lead to a survey by the Royal Irish Academy headed by Edward T. Browne of University College London in 1895 and 1896. Browne was particularly interested in plankton, the floating marine organisms ranging in size from microbes to large jellyfish, which are often the basis of the food chain and indicative of ocean health. Maude and Constance continued with their systematic study, gathering specimen of often tiny jellyfish and plankton by dredging and tow-netting, as well as recording sea temperature and changes in marine life for 28 years! They brought specimen back to the lab to identify and sketch them. Maude's patience, attention to detail, skill with her microscope and as an artist allowed her to document microscopic details of jellyfish structures and organs. Maude corresponded with Browne for forty years until his death in 1937. It's speculated that she had fallen in love with him; it was unrequited and he married a colleague. She sent him a box of violets she grew in her garden each year for his birthday. Browne thanked both sisters in his publications and jointly published research with Maude. 

Maude became fascinated by the life cycle of jellyfish. She painstakingly developed a means of keeping them alive in captivity - something which other scientists had struggled and failed to achieve. She determined their diet, at each stage of development, through trial and error and explained the paramount role proper diet plays in being able to keep them in captivity. She changed the water daily, adjusting temperature to match that in the habour, where they thrived, and carefully monitored the jellyfish. She was the first person to breed them successfully in her home laboratory. The life cycle of the jellyfish is unusual: an adult medusa can procreate by producing a planuala (or egg), which implants on a surface like the seafloor and grows into a polyp (which looks a little like a plant rooted in the ground). The polyp can grow into a budding polyp. This stage of the cycle can go either direction; in less than optimal conditions the budding polyp can revert to the polyp stage. In optimal conditions the budding polyp will bud off ephyrae and these eventually grow into adult medusae. Previous to Delap's work, these various stages could be misinterpreted as separate species. She bred four species of jellyfish including Chrysaora isosceles (the compass jellyfish) and Cyanea lamarckii (the blue jellyfish shown in my print) and documented their life cycles and feeding habits and published her results. Her trailblazing research was the first identification of the various life cycle stages (medusa and hydra) that belong to which species. Quite unusually for a woman at the time, Maude published several influential scientific papers under her own name: she published six articles, and three short notes, including two co-authored by Constance. Thanks to her contributions to marine biology she was offered a position in 1906 at the Plymouth Marine Biological Station in England. She declined the job; her father had apparently declared,  "No daughter of mine will leave home, except as a married woman." While this lost opportunity must have been an immense disappointment, she continued her work at home. Leaving Valentia, and her sisters, at age 40 might also have been quite a daunting prospect. Staying in Valentia allowed her to produce her incredible lengthy study of Valentia harbour, and support her unmarried sisters for the rest of their lives, growing and fishing for food and earning income from selling flowers from her garden.

When her father died later that year, the her mother, two sisters and Maude moved out of the Parsonage and were permitted to use Reenellen House by the Knight of Kerry. There, they hosted many guests including friends, family, visiting scientists and naturalists, and fishermen seeking safety and shelter in bad weather. While remote, Valentia was home to a telegraph station which was the European terminus for the trans-Atlantic cable, a weather station and an observatory, which did lead to a number of visiting engineers, scientists and marine biologist. The Delap sisters were highly-regarded members of their community, who helped run the local cottage hospital and fisherman's hall, known for their charity and generosity but also for wearing outdated Edwardian clothes, both for propriety and economic necessity. Her nephews recalled going fishing in the evening to feed all the guests, along with fruits and vegetables they grew in the garden. They set up a laboratory they fondly dubbed "The Department" which was described by her nephew as an "heroic jumble of books, specimens, aquaria, with its pervasive low-tide smell." Aquaria contained not only jellyfish, but fish, starfish and even a thornback ray Maude reared from an egg. She buried dead marine vertebrates in her garden to recover their skeletons. 

In 1920, as the official whale-stranding officer for south west Ireland, appointed by the British Museum and the local contact for interesting wildlife, she was alerted to a stranded 16-foot whale on the rocks beyond the lighthouse. So she rowed out with her handyman, and she correctly identified a rare True's beaked whale, only previously been known from an incomplete US specimen. Unable to save it, she sent its head and flippers (on request) to the Natural History Museum and buried the rest in her garden. The Museum later requested the rest of the skeleton, causing her to dig up her asparagus garden to gather them. The Museum wrote again that two tiny vestigial pelvic bones were missing so Maude dug up her garden again and sieved the soil until she received a telegram from the Museum which read, “Stop! New York Museum informs us that True’s beaked whale does not possess vestigial pelvic bones."  

In 1928, she found a previously undescribed sea anemone burrowing deep into the eelgrass. Named in her honour, the Burrowing Sea Anemone (Edwardsia delapiae) has only been observed in Valentia habour.  In 1936, she was made an associate of the Linnean Society of London. In 1937 she was made an associate member of the Marine Biological Association. She submitted specimen and corresponded with the Natural History Museum from 1894 until 1949, when she was 83. Like her father before her, she submitted observations to Dr Scully’s “Flora and Fauna of Kerry” and both are acknowledged in the text. Maude was also interested in folklore, geology, botany and archaeology and she published several papers in the Kerry Archaeological Magazine. Her grand-nephew recalled Maude, the "old-school Victorian all-round naturalist”, saying, “Wherever we went, she was instantly recognized and greeted with delight”. She died in 1953, and was buried alongside her sisters near Knightstown, Valentia Island, County Kerry. There is now a plaque from the Irish National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology to commemorate her and her work, on the island.

 *I have written previously about Delap's life and work here.

References,

Byrne, Patricia M. Delap, Maude Jane. Dictionary of Irish Biography. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002516.v1 

Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography

Last revised October 2009

 

Cronin, Nessa. Gendering Natural History: Maude Jane Delap, Valentia Island, Ireland (1866-1953). Land Lines Project. January 7, 2019.

M. J. Delap. 1905. Notes on the rearing, in an aquarium of Cyanea Lamarcki, Peron et Lesueur. Annual report of Fisheries, Ireland 1902-03. II (I(ii)) 20-22.

Maude Delap, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2024. 

Muka, Samantha Kay. Maude Delap: Jellyfish Goddess of the North Atlantic, Through the Aquarium Glass blog, October 29, 2012.

Sheehan, Jane. Finding Maude Delap, LIVE – Llŷn, Iveragh Ecomuseum blog, accessed January, 2024

Sheehan, Jane. Finding Maude Delap, Online Lunchetime Talk, LIVE – Llŷn, Iveragh Ecomuseum, YouTube, February 11, 2022.

Sheehan, Jane. Maude Delap Heritage Trail. 27 July 2023. (Accessed January 2024)

Anemones!

Clownfish and Anemone, linocut, 9.25" x 12.5" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

 

August is coastal month for #InsertAnInvert2024 so I made a couple of anemone prints. For the first prompt 'tropical reef' I made a rose bubble anemone.This is a handprinted linocut of two ocean creatures with a mutualistic symbiotic relationship: anemone and anemonefish. Specifically it's a rose bubble-tip anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor) and a clownfish (in the genus Amphiprion), also known as an anemonefish. Sea anemones protect anemonefish from predators, and serve as a safe nest. The anemonefish get food from anemone leftovers and the occasional dead anemone tentacles. In return, the anemonefish defends the anemone from its predators and parasites and nitrogen excreted by the anemonefish increases the number of algae incorporated into the tissue of their hosts, which aids the anemone in tissue growth and regeneration. The fish even aerate their hosts with their movements and may lure anemone pray with their bright colours.

For prompt 'temperate reef', I shared my lemon lolly nudibranch again. For the prompt 'intertidal' I re-posted the ochre sea stars. But, for the prompt 'sand' I made a wandering anemone linocut.

Wandering Sea Anemone, linocut, 8" x 10", Ele Willoughby, 2024

This is my hand-printed Lino block print of a wandering sea anemone (Phlyctenactis tuberculosa) on 8” x 10” Japanese mulberry paper. The wandering sea anemone or swimming anemone, is a species of venomous sea anemone in the family Actiniidae native to sheltered reefs of shallow seas around Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa. They are covered in bubble like sacks in a variety of colours (including pink!) with lighter coloured tentacles. It bundles together during the day and its appearance has been likened to baked beans. At night it comes alive and goes wandering; though generally attached to rock, seagrasses and kelp, it can detach its pedestal disk and creep along the seabed, climb sea grasses or algae to find better places to hunt prey.

Cyanotypes and Memento mori

 One recent sunny day, I made some new cyanotypes, and also took the time to tone and tint some previous cyanotypes.

Skeleton Amongst Tulips, cyanotype by Ele Willoughby, 2024

Virginia creeper and red admiral butterfly cyanotype, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

Willow cyanotype, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

Virginia Creeper and Lemon Balm Cyanotype, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

More Troglofauna and Stygofauna

Paroster macrosturtensis, linocut print, 8" x 8" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

The other two #InsertAnInvert2024 prompts were troglofauna or cave fauna and stygofauna or subterranean but aquatic fauna. 

This is a hand-printed of the Paroster macrosturtensis beetle, a blind predatory subterranean diving water beetle from the calcrete aquifers of the Western Australian desert. Trapped underground for million of years as the calcrete caves formed these beetles have evolved to no longer have eyes. It is printed on 8" x 8" Japanese paper.

Neoniphargidae, 8" x 8" linocut print by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This is a hard-carved and hand-printed linocut print of a little semi-transparent, white amphipod crustacean in the Neoniphargidae group from the Pilbara. This is a large, dry, sparsely populated region in northern part of Western Australia which is a global biodiversity hotspot for subterranean fauna including aquatic animals that live in groundwater called stygofauna like this. Stygofauna can live in subterranean caves but most commonly live in alluvial, karstic or fractured rock aquifers within pore space and fractures in the rock.  In the absence of light, stygofauna lack eyes and pigmentation. Stygofauna have evolved and survived over millions of years in the ecologically important Pilbara groundwater environment.