Description
Born: 1473
Died: 1543

Born in Poland, Nicholas Copernicus studied astronomy at the University of Kraków before leaving for Italy to study medicine and canon law. By around 1500 he had taken up position as a lecturer in mathematics and astronomy in Rome. In 1512 he moved to Frauenburg in East Prussia to become the Canon of the cathedral there where he also practised medicine.

Copernicus’s great contribution to science was his heliocentric theory that the Sun and not the Earth was the centre of the solar system. Traditional ideas about the way the solar system worked stemmed from the teachings of the 2nd century AD astronomer and mathematician, Ptolemy. Ptolemy believed that the Earth was the stationary centre of the solar system with the Sun, stars and planets revolving about it in circular orbits.

Copernicus’s ideas about the solar system were based on his study of ancient astronomical records and his own observations. Although he placed the Sun at the centre of his pattern for the solar system, Copernicus still believed like Ptolemy, that the stars and planets revolved around the sun in circular orbits. Today we know that this isn’t true and that the orbits of the planets are elliptical in nature. Copernicus published his theories in his work ‘De revolutionibus orbium coelestium’ which although probably completed in 1530, was not published until he was on his deathbed in 1543.

The Copernican theory was to revolutionise the field of astronomy and paved the way for the work of later astronomers and theorists like Kepler and Newton.