Science · Maths, astronomy, medicine & more

Nicolaus Copernicus

1473–1543 · Polish (Royal Prussia)

Astronomy — heliocentrism

Nicolaus Copernicus, born in Toruń and for most of his life a canon of the cathedral chapter of Warmia (Ermland) at Frombork, proposed that the Earth and planets revolve around a stationary Sun. His De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in Nuremberg in 1543, the year of his death, displaced the Earth-centred Ptolemaic system and is often taken as the starting point of the Scientific Revolution, hence the phrase "Copernican revolution".

How to spot them

▸De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), 1543
▸Born in Toruń; canon at Frombork (Frauenburg); studied at Kraków, Bologna, Padua and Ferrara
▸Pupil Rheticus; the unsigned preface to De revolutionibus added by Andreas Osiander
▸Element 112, copernicium, named after him in 2010
▸The 'Copernican principle' and 'Copernican revolution'

Key discoveries & works

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres; the full Sun-centred system, dedicated to Pope Paul III

Commentariolus (c. 1514)

Short handwritten outline of a Sun-centred cosmos, circulated privately among scholars

Monetae cudendae ratio (1526)

Treatise on coinage arguing that debased money drives good money out of circulation, anticipating Gresham's law

Latin translation of the letters of Theophylact Simocatta (1509)

Translation from Greek of a Byzantine author's moral letters, published in Kraków

Key ideas

Heliocentrism: the Sun, not the Earth, is at the centre, and the Earth rotates daily on its axis and orbits the Sun yearly
Explained the apparent retrograde motion of the planets as an effect of the Earth's own motion
Kept circular orbits and epicycles; elliptical orbits came later with Kepler
The Copernican principle: the Earth (and humanity) occupies no privileged position in the universe

Quick-fire facts

•Born 19 February 1473 in Toruń; died 24 May 1543 in Frombork
•Took a doctorate in canon law at Ferrara in 1503 and also studied medicine at Padua
•His only pupil, Georg Joachim Rheticus, persuaded him to publish and wrote the Narratio prima, a first account of the theory
•The Lutheran theologian Andreas Osiander inserted an unsigned preface presenting the theory as a mere calculating hypothesis
•Legend says he was handed a printed copy of De revolutionibus on his deathbed
•IUPAC announced the name copernicium (Cn) for element 112 on 19 February 2010, his birthday
•Remains found in Frombork Cathedral were identified in 2008, partly by DNA matched to hairs in one of his books, and reburied in 2010
•The Copernicus programme is the name of the European Union's Earth observation programme

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources

MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews — Nicolaus Copernicus
Owen Gingerich — The Book Nobody Read