Publishers 15th century
Georgius Merula, also Giorgio Merlani di Negro or Georgius Merula Alexandrinus, was an Italian humanist scholar, philosopher, philologist and historian of the Renaissance.
He held the position of professor and taught in Milan and Venice. But became known for being the first to print the works of Plautus (1472), Scriptores rei rusticae, Cato, Varron, Columella, and Palladius (1472). He also published commentaries on parts of Cicero (especially De finibus), Ausonius, Juvenal, Curtius Rufus, and other classical authors. Merula also labored in historical research and described several significant battles.
Regiomontanus, real name Johannes Müller, was a 15th-century German astronomer and mathematician, one of the first printers.
The son of a miller, he entered the University of Leipzig at the age of 11 and later transferred to the University of Vienna. In 1452, Regiomontanus earned a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree. With his teacher, the mathematical astronomer Georg von Peyerbach (d. 1461), he spent the next years practicing astronomy and astrology, including observations of eclipses and comets, making astronomical instruments, and compiling horoscopes for the court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III.
Regiomontanus was also seriously involved in mathematics, publishing his major work on trigonometry, On All Kinds of Triangles (1462-1464). From 1467 to 1471, Regiomontanus lived in Hungary as astrologer to Hungarian King Matyas I and Archbishop Janos Vitez. Then in Nuremberg, Germany, he opened an instrument workshop, established a printing house, and continued his planetary observations. The scholar planned to print extensive publications on classical, medieval, and modern mathematical sciences, but not all plans came to fruition.