After 400 Years, Still Hot on the Trail

After 400 Years, Still Hot on the Trail
By DAN BILEFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/wo...ht-prague.html

PRAGUE — Some contend it was a crime of passion committed by a jealous
king. Others insist it was murder inspired by professional rivalry
between two celebrated astronomers, one of whom poisoned the other with
mercury. Or was it death by natural causes — a bursting bladder, perhaps?

Seeking to solve a 400-year-old mystery, this week a team of Czech and
Danish scientists exhumed the body of the 16th-century Danish astronomer
Tycho Brahe, whose celestial observations laid the groundwork for modern
astronomy and who died in Prague in 1601, age 54.

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/wo...ht-prague.html