Here are some facts about Nicolaus Copernicus!
Nicolaus Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466.
Copernicus’s wrote a book called On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.
He was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a heliocentric view of the universe.
He thought the sun was Heliocentric. Heliocentric means sun centered.
The Heliocentric model places the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center.
In his time, people were often called after the places where they lived.
His father was involved in the politics of the day and supported Poland and the cities against the Teutonic Order.
He was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Torun [thorn].
Nicolaus was the youngest of four children.
Not much is known about his mother’s life, but she is believed to have died when Nicolaus was a small boy.
Copernicus is believed to have spoken Latin, German, and Polish with equal fluency. He also spoke Greek and Italian.
Despite the near universal acceptance today of the heliocentric idea, Copernicus’ theory was originally slow to catch on.
In 1510 or 1512 Copernicus moved to Frombork, a town to the northwest at the Vistula Lagoon on the Baltic sea coast.
There, in April 1512, he participated in the election of Fabian lossainen as Prince-Bishop of Warmia.
In 1526 Copernicus wrote a study on the value of money, Monetae cudendae ratio.
Copernicus’ ideas on monetary reform were widely read by leaders of both Prussia and Poland in their attempts to stabilize currency.
In 1533, Johann Widmanstetter, secretary to Pope Clement VII, explained Copernicus’ heliocentric system to the Pope and two cardinals.
In his younger days, Copernicus the physician had treated his uncle, brother and other chapter members.
Some of Copernicus’ close friends turned Protestant, but Copernicus never showed a tendency in that direction.
In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered a series of lectures in Rome outlining Copernicus’ theory.
Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī al-Kātibī (d. 1277), wrote an argument for a heliocentric model, but later abandoned the model.
Arthur Koestler, in his popular book, The Sleepwalkers, asserted that Copernicus’ book had not been widely read on its first publication.
The intellectual climate of the time “remained dominated by Aristotelian philosophy and the corresponding Ptolemaic astronomy.
The publication of Copernicus’ book was met with only mild controversy.
The geocentric model, also known as the Ptolemaic system, places the earth at the center of our solar system.
Toward the close of 1542, Copernicus was seized with apoplexy and paralysis, and he died at age 70 on 24 May 1543.
The grave was in poor condition, and the skeleton was incomplete; missing, among other things, was the lower jaw.
The find came after a year of searching, and the discovery was announced after further research, on 3 November 2008.
On 22 May 2010 Copernicus was given a second funeral.
On 14 July 2009, German discoverers of chemical element 112 proposed that its permanent name be “copernicium” (symbol Cn).
Bibliography
Wikipedia, “Nicolaus Copernicus”
