Scientists dig into murder conspiracy

A team of Czech and Danish scientists exhumed the body of 16th-century astronomer Tycho Brahe Nov. 15 in an attempt to dig up answers about the mysterious death of the famed scientist.

Brahe's remains were transferred to the anthropological depository of Prague's National Museum for an initial examination. A briefing on the initial findings was expected the evening of Nov. 16 after this edition of The Prague Post went to press. The body will next undergo a tomographic scan at Na Homolce hospital.

"On [Nov. 18], we are planning to draw the first hair, beard and maybe even bone samples," Jan Kučera, a researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences' Nuclear Physics Institute who is working on the Brahe project, told The Prague Post.

The corpse is expected to be returned to the grave in the Church of Our Lady Before Týn on Old Town Square by Nov. 19, when a special mass will be held.

The official cause of Brahe's death was from a burst bladder following overindulgence in food and drink at a banquet, but some suspect a more sinister cause: murder.

Brahe, a Dane, lived in Prague during the rule of Emperor Rudolf II, who was known for creating a liberated social environment ripe for scientific inquiry. Brahe eventually partnered with mathematician Johannes Kepler for a prolific 18-month collaborative period leading up to his death. While a statue of the pair now stands in Malá Strana, the partnership was an uneasy one from the beginning with Brahe known for his love of the high life and Kepler for a monastic commitment to science. 

After Brahe's death, Kepler would eventually gain possession of Brahe's much coveted research and would later move on to continue work in Linz, Austria. Conspiracy theorists have long fingered a jealous Kepler as a murderer who killed his colleague and then purchased Brahe's research from his unsuspecting widow. According to theorists, Kepler intentionally poisoned Brahe with mercury, symptoms of which would coincide with Brahe's 11 days of agony that ended in his bladder bursting.

But skeptics dismiss the tale, justifying the presence of mercury in Brahe's corpse as a sign of his taste for alchemy, a common fascination of scientists at the time who sought to convert various elements into gold.

"If we find a high concentration of mercury at the roots of his hair, one that is higher than the amount that we found at the tips, which was relatively low, then that will mean he was in contact with mercury right before he died, which would point to him being poisoned," Kučera said. "Should the concentration of mercury be even across the entire length of his hair, that would point to long-term exposure to mercury."

The exhumation is being led by Danish scientist Jens Vellev.

"I don't know if it's possible to answer the question of how [Brahe] died," Vellev, a medieval and Renaissance archaeologist from the University of Aarhus in eastern Denmark, told The Prague Post earlier this year. "I think not. I'm more interested in how he lived."

After taking nearly seven hours to remove Brahe's tombstone Nov. 15, scientists were surprised to find the remains of a woman who died at 20 years old or younger and the skull of a small child in the grave site next to his. The remains were found in a place where scientists expected to find the body of Brahe's wife.

"We can doubt whether Brahe's wife is buried here at all," anthropologist Petr Veleminský told journalists. 

- Sarah Borufka contributed to this report.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com