  In 1614, the German astronomer Simon Mayr published his claim to have
discovered the satellites of Jupiter. Writing in the treatise Mundus Jovialis,
Mayr made his assertion in a convoluted but unequivocal manner, earning the
displeasure of Galileo Galilei, who published his harsh protest in 1623 in Il
Saggiatore. Though objections of Galileo were fallacious in some respects, and
though numerous scholars took to the field to prove claim of Mayr, none ever
really succeeded, and the historical evidence remains to detriment of Mayr. On
the basis of such historical evidence, including comparisons between Mundus
Jovialis and earlier works of Mayr, independent discovery of the satellites by
Mayr can be ruled out. Indeed, it is very likely that he never observed them
before 30 December 1610, nearly a year after Galileo. The absence of a corpus
of observations by Mayr and the inaccuracy of his tables are also puzzling.
