Digges, Generation 12
Thomas Digges (1546 – August 24, 1595) was an English astronomer, son of Leonard Digges, inventor of the theodolite, and great populariser of science. After the death of his father, Thomas grew up under the guardianship of John Dee, a typical Renaissance natural philosopher.

He attempted to determine the parallax of the 1572 supernova observed by Tycho Brahe, and concluded it had to be beyond the orbit of the Moon. This contradicted the accepted view of the universe, according to which no change could take place among the fixed stars.

In 1576 he published a new edition of his father's perpetual almanac, A Prognostication everlasting. The text written by Leonard Digges for the third edition of 1556 was left unchanged, but Thomas added new material in several appendices. The most important of these was A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, latelye revived by Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved. Contrary to the Ptolemaic cosmology of the original book by his father, the appendix featured a detailed discussion of the controversial and still poorly known Copernican heliocentric model of the Universe. This was the first publication of that model in english, and a milestone in the popularisation of science. For the most part, the appendix was a loose translation into English of chapters from Copernicus' book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. However, Thomas Digges actually went further by indicating a multitude of stars extending to infinity in all directions.

Digges served as a Member of Parliament for Wallingford and also had a military career as a Muster-Master General to the English forces from 1586 to 1594 during the war with the Spanish Netherlands.