Search results
Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center.
- 24 May 1543 (aged 70), Frauenburg, Royal Prussia, Poland
- Overview
- Early life and education
Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer who proposed a heliocentric system, that the planets orbit around the Sun; that Earth is a planet which, besides orbiting the Sun annually, also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow changes in the direction of this axis account for the precession of the equinoxes.
Where did Nicolaus Copernicus study?
Nicolaus Copernicus studied liberal arts—including astronomy and astrology—at the University of Cracow (Kraków). He continued his studies at the University of Bologna and studied medicine at the University of Padua. He received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara, but he did not study there.
What did Nicolaus Copernicus do for a living?
As a church canon, Nicolaus Copernicus worked for a bishopric in Poland collecting rents; securing military defenses; overseeing chapter finances; managing a bakery, brewery, and mills; and caring for the medical needs of the other canons. Copernicus’s astronomical work took place in his spare time, apart from these other obligations.
How did Nicolaus Copernicus influence others?
Certain facts about Copernicus’s early life are well established, although a biography written by his ardent disciple Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514–74) is unfortunately lost. According to a later horoscope, Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, in Toruń, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River south of the major Baltic seaport of Gdańsk. His father, Nicolaus, was a well-to-do merchant, and his mother, Barbara Watzenrode, also came from a leading merchant family. Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. After his father’s death, sometime between 1483 and 1485, his mother’s brother Lucas Watzenrode (1447–1512) took his nephew under his protection. Watzenrode, soon to be bishop of the chapter of Varmia (Warmia), saw to young Nicolaus’s education and his future career as a church canon. (See Researcher’s Note for information about Copernicus’s nationality.)
Between 1491 and about 1494 Copernicus studied liberal arts—including astronomy and astrology—at the University of Cracow (Kraków). Like many students of his time, however, he left before completing his degree, resuming his studies in Italy at the University of Bologna, where his uncle had obtained a doctorate in canon law in 1473. The Bologna period (1496–1500) was short but significant. For a time Copernicus lived in the same house as the principal astronomer at the university, Domenico Maria de Novara (Latin: Domenicus Maria Novaria Ferrariensis; 1454–1504). Novara had the responsibility of issuing annual astrological prognostications for the city, forecasts that included all social groups but gave special attention to the fate of the Italian princes and their enemies. Copernicus, as is known from Rheticus, was “assistant and witness” to some of Novara’s observations, and his involvement with the production of the annual forecasts means that he was intimately familiar with the practice of astrology. Novara also probably introduced Copernicus to two important books that framed his future problematic as a student of the heavens: Epitoma in Almagestum Ptolemaei (“Epitome of Ptolemy’s Almagest”) by Johann Müller (also known as Regiomontanus, 1436–76) and Disputationes adversus astrologianm divinatricenm (“Disputations against Divinatory Astrology”) by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94). The first provided a summary of the foundations of Ptolemy’s astronomy, with Regiomontanus’s corrections and critical expansions of certain important planetary models that might have been suggestive to Copernicus of directions leading to the heliocentric hypothesis. Pico’s Disputationes offered a devastating skeptical attack on the foundations of astrology that reverberated into the 17th century. Among Pico’s criticisms was the charge that, because astronomers disagreed about the order of the planets, astrologers could not be certain about the strengths of the powers issuing from the planets.
Only 27 recorded observations are known for Copernicus’s entire life (he undoubtedly made more than that), most of them concerning eclipses, alignments, and conjunctions of planets and stars. The first such known observation occurred on March 9, 1497, at Bologna. In De revolutionibus, book 4, chapter 27, Copernicus reported that he had seen the Moon eclipse “the brightest star in the eye of the Bull,” Alpha Tauri (Aldebaran). By the time he published this observation in 1543, he had made it the basis of a theoretical claim: that it confirmed exactly the size of the apparent lunar diameter. But in 1497 he was probably using it to assist in checking the new- and full-moon tables derived from the commonly used Alfonsine Tables and employed in Novara’s forecast for the year 1498.
Britannica Quiz
All About Astronomy
In 1500 Copernicus spoke before an interested audience in Rome on mathematical subjects, but the exact content of his lectures is unknown. In 1501 he stayed briefly in Frauenburg but soon returned to Italy to continue his studies, this time at the University of Padua, where he pursued medical studies between 1501 and 1503. At this time medicine was closely allied with astrology, as the stars were thought to influence the body’s dispositions. Thus, Copernicus’s astrological experience at Bologna was better training for medicine than one might imagine today. Copernicus later painted a self-portrait; it is likely that he acquired the necessary artistic skills while in Padua, since there was a flourishing community of painters there and in nearby Venice. In May 1503 Copernicus finally received a doctorate—like his uncle, in canon law—but from an Italian university where he had not studied: the University of Ferrara. When he returned to Poland, Bishop Watzenrode arranged a sinecure for him: an in absentia teaching post at Wrocław. Copernicus’s actual duties at the bishopric palace, however, were largely administrative and medical. As a church canon, he collected rents from church-owned lands; secured military defenses; oversaw chapter finances; managed the bakery, brewery, and mills; and cared for the medical needs of the other canons and his uncle. (Despite serving as a canon, Copernicus did not become a priest.) Copernicus’s astronomical work took place in his spare time, apart from these other obligations. He used the knowledge of Greek that he had acquired during his Italian studies to prepare a Latin translation of the aphorisms of an obscure 7th-century Byzantine historian and poet, Theophylactus Simocattes. The work was published in Cracow in 1509 and dedicated to his uncle. It was during the last years of Watzenrode’s life that Copernicus evidently came up with the idea on which his subsequent fame was to rest.
Nov 9, 2009 · Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer and mathematician known as the father of modern astronomy. He was the first European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around...
Apr 3, 2014 · Famous Scientists. Nicolaus Copernicus. Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was instrumental in establishing the concept of a heliocentric solar system, in which the sun, rather than the earth,...
Oct 26, 2020 · Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543 CE) was a Polish astronomer who famously proposed that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun in a heliocentric system and not, as then widely thought, in a geocentric system where the Earth is the centre.
- Mark Cartwright
- What did Nicolaus Copernicus discover?Nicolaus Copernicus revived the idea that the Sun was the centre of our galaxy and not the Earth. He also proposed a new order for the planets in r...
- What are 5 facts about Nicolaus Copernicus?Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer, he thought the Earth revolved around the Sun (a heliocentric system), he thought the Earth turns on it...
- In what way was Copernicus' theory revolutionary?Copernicus revived the ancient theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice versa. The Church thought this was against the Bible whic...
People also ask
What is Nicolaus Copernicus best known for?
Did Nicolaus Copernicus believe in a heliocentric system?
What did Nicolaus Copernicus think?
What did Nicolaus Copernicus propose?
Nov 30, 2004 · Nicolaus Copernicus. First published Tue Nov 30, 2004; substantive revision Fri Sep 29, 2023. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) was a mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the sun was stationary in the center of the universe and the earth revolved around it.
Jan 17, 2022 · Nicolaus Copernicus proposed his theory that the planets revolved around the sun in the 1500s, when most people believed that Earth was the center of the universe. Although his model wasn't ...
