Nicolaus
Copernicus was a Polish astronomer, best known for his theory that the Sun and
not the Earth is at the center of the universe. He was born on February 19, 1473 in Torun,
Poland and died on May 24, 1543 in Frombork, Poland.
His father was a
merchant and local official. When Copernicus was 10, his father died, and his
uncle, a priest, ensured that Copernicus received a good education. In 1491, he
went to Krakow Academy, now the Jagiellonian University, and in 1496 travelled
to Italy to study law. While a student at the University of Bologna he stayed
with a mathematics professor, Domenico Maria de Novara, who encouraged
Copernicus' interests in geography and astronomy.
During his time in
Italy, Copernicus visited Rome and studied at the universities of Padua and
Ferrara, before returning to Poland in 1503. For the next seven years he worked
as a private secretary to his uncle, now the bishop of Ermland.
The bishop died in 1512
and Copernicus moved to Frauenberg, where he had long held a position as a
canon, an administrative appointment in the church. This gave him more time to
devote to astronomy. Although he did not seek fame, it is clear that he was by
now well known as an astronomer. In 1514, when the Catholic church was seeking
to improve the calendar, one of the experts to whom the pope appealed was
Copernicus.
Copernicus' major work
'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' ('On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres') was finished by 1530. Its central theory was that the Earth rotates
daily on its axis and revolves yearly around the sun. He also argued that the
planets circled the Sun. This challenged the long held view that the Earth was
stationary at the centre of the universe with all the planets, the Moon and the
Sun rotating around it.
'De Revolutionibus
Orbium Coelestium' was published in early 1543 and Copernicus died on 24 May in
the same year.
View a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCR-DUKXgW0
For more info.:
James Conroyd Martin is
an Irish and Norwegian writer who found himself immersed in Polish culture when
a friend told him of a diary of a countess that had been passed down through
his family for generations. The diary of a Polish countess became the
foundation of the novel Push Not the River and led to a trilogy
that included Against a Crimson Sky and The Warsaw
Conspiracy.
