Maria Cunitz - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

MARIA CUNITZ (c. 1610-1664), Silesian astronomer, was the eldest daughter of Dr Heinrich Cunitz of Schweinitz, and the wife (1630) of Dr Elias von ',Oven, of Pitschen in Silesia - both of them men of learning and distinction. From her universal accomplishments she was called the "Silesian Pallas," and the publication of her work, Urania propitia (Oels, 1650), a simplification of the Rudolphine Tables, gained her a European reputation. It was composed at the village of Lugnitz, close by the convent of Olobok (Posen), where, with her husband, she had taken refuge at the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War, and was dedicated to the emperor Frederick III. The author became a widow in 1661, and died at Pitschen on the 2 4 th of August 1664.

See A. G. Kastner, Geschichte der Mathematik, iv. 430 (1800); N. Henelii, Silesiographia renovata, cap. vi. p. 684; J. C. Eberti's Schlesiens wohlgelehrtes Frauenzimmer, p. 25 (Breslau, 1727); Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Schimmelpfenning); &c.