61 Facts About Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus 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.

The publication of Copernicus's model in his book, just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution.

Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466.

Copernicus's father was a merchant from Krakow and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Torun merchant.

Copernicus never married and is not known to have had children, but from at least 1531 until 1539 his relations with Anna Schilling, a live-in housekeeper, were seen as scandalous by two bishops of Warmia who urged him over the years to break off relations with his "mistress".

Copernicus's father married Barbara Watzenrode, the astronomer's mother, between 1461 and 1464.

Copernicus was a bitter opponent of the Teutonic Order, and its Grand Master once referred to him as "the devil incarnate".

Copernicus was a friend and key advisor to each ruler, and his influence greatly strengthened the ties between Warmia and Poland proper.

Copernicus biographers assume that Watzenrode first sent young Copernicus to St John's School, at Torun, where he himself had been a master.

Copernicus began his studies in the Department of Arts in the heyday of the Krakow astronomical-mathematical school, acquiring the foundations for his subsequent mathematical achievements.

Copernicus broadened the knowledge that he took from the university lecture halls with independent reading of books that he acquired during his Krakow years ; to this period, probably, date his earliest scientific notes, now preserved partly at Uppsala University.

At Krakow Copernicus began collecting a large library on astronomy; it would later be carried off as war booty by the Swedes during the Deluge in the 1650s and is at the Uppsala University Library.

Copernicus did take minor orders, which sufficed for assuming a chapter canonry.

Copernicus met the famous astronomer Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara and became his disciple and assistant.

Copernicus was developing new ideas inspired by reading the "Epitome of the Almagest" by George von Peuerbach and Johannes Regiomontanus.

Copernicus spent the jubilee year 1500 in Rome, where he arrived with his brother Andrew that spring, doubtless to perform an apprenticeship at the Papal Curia.

On his return journey doubtless stopping briefly at Bologna, in mid-1501 Copernicus arrived back in Warmia.

One of the subjects that Copernicus must have studied was astrology, since it was considered an important part of a medical education.

Copernicus was his uncle's secretary and physician from 1503 to 1510 and resided in the Bishop's castle at Lidzbark, where he began work on his heliocentric theory.

Copernicus had translated the Greek verses into Latin prose, and he now published his version as Theophilacti scolastici Simocati epistolae morales, rurales et amatoriae interpretatione latina, which he dedicated to his uncle in gratitude for all the benefits he had received from him.

Copernicus's first poetic work was a Greek epigram, composed probably during a visit to Krakow, for Johannes Dantiscus' epithalamium for Barbara Zapolya's 1512 wedding to King Zygmunt I the Old.

The Commentariolus, which Copernicus consciously saw as merely a first sketch for his planned book, was not intended for printed distribution.

In 1510 or 1512 Copernicus moved to Frombork, a town to the northwest at the Vistula Lagoon on the Baltic Sea coast.

At Frombork Copernicus conducted over half of his more than 60 registered astronomical observations.

That same year Copernicus assumed responsibility, as magister pistoriae, for administering the chapter's economic enterprises, having already since 1511 fulfilled the duties of chancellor and visitor of the chapter's estates.

Copernicus represented the Polish side in the ensuing peace negotiations.

Copernicus for years advised the Royal Prussian sejmik on monetary reform, particularly in the 1520s when that was a major question in regional Prussian politics.

Copernicus was one of four candidates for the post, written in at the initiative of Tiedemann Giese; but his candidacy was actually pro forma, since Dantiscus had earlier been named coadjutor bishop to Ferber and since Dantiscus had the backing of Poland's King Sigismund I At first Copernicus maintained friendly relations with the new Prince-Bishop, assisting him medically in spring 1538 and accompanying him that summer on an inspection tour of Chapter holdings.

Copernicus went willingly; he had met von Kunheim during negotiations over reform of the coinage.

Some time before 1514 Copernicus made available to friends his "Commentariolus", a manuscript describing his ideas about the heliocentric hypothesis.

Copernicus was still working on De revolutionibus orbium coelestium when in 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a Wittenberg mathematician, arrived in Frombork.

Rheticus became Copernicus's pupil, staying with him for two years and writing a book, Narratio prima, outlining the essence of Copernicus's theory.

Copernicus is reputed to have awoken from a stroke-induced coma, looked at his book, and then died peacefully.

Copernicus was reportedly buried in Frombork Cathedral, where a 1580 epitaph stood until being defaced; it was replaced in 1735.

The DNA from the bones found in the grave matched hair samples taken from a book owned by Copernicus which was kept at the library of the University of Uppsala in Sweden.

On 22 May 2010, Copernicus was given a second funeral in a Mass led by Jozef Kowalczyk, the former papal nuncio to Poland and newly named Primate of Poland.

Copernicus's remains were reburied in the same spot in Frombork Cathedral where part of his skull and other bones had been found.

Copernicus's hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun on the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same centre as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the centre of the sphere bears to its surface.

Copernicus was probably aware that Pythagoras's system involved a moving Earth.

Copernicus owned a copy of Giorgio Valla's De expetendis et fugiendis rebus, which included a translation of Plutarch's reference to Aristarchus's heliostaticism.

Copernicus declared the Ptolemaic system as an imaginary model, successful at predicting planetary positions, but not real or physical.

Copernicus used what is known as the Urdi lemma and the Tusi couple in the same planetary models as found in Arabic sources.

Nevertheless, Copernicus cited some of the Islamic astronomers whose theories and observations he used in De Revolutionibus, namely al-Battani, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Zarqali, Averroes, and al-Bitruji.

Arthur Koestler, in his popular book The Sleepwalkers, asserted that Copernicus's book had not been widely read on its first publication.

The immediate result of the 1543 publication of Copernicus's book was only mild controversy.

Copernicus had obtained a copy of De Revolutionibus in 1544.

Copernicus held that Copernicus had come up with his idea and then sought phenomena that would support it, rather than observing phenomena and deducing from them the idea of what caused them.

Tolosani invoked this view in his final critique of Copernicus, saying that his biggest error was that he had started with "inferior" fields of science to make pronouncements about "superior" fields.

Copernicus had used mathematics and astronomy to postulate about physics and cosmology, rather than beginning with the accepted principles of physics and cosmology to determine things about astronomy and mathematics.

Tolosani recognized that the Ad Lectorem preface to Copernicus's book was not actually by him.

For by a foolish effort he [Copernicus] tried to revive the weak Pythagorean opinion [that the element of fire was at the center of the Universe], long ago deservedly destroyed, since it is expressly contrary to human reason and opposes holy writ.

In Roman Catholic circles, Copernicus's book was incorporated into scholarly curricula throughout the 16th century.

In 1633, Galileo Galilei was convicted of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture", and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Copernicus is postulated to have spoken Latin, German, and Polish with equal fluency; he spoke Greek and Italian, and had some knowledge of Hebrew.

Nicolaus Copernicus's great-grandfather is recorded as having received citizenship in Krakow in 1386.

Nicolaus Copernicus was born and raised in Royal Prussia, a semiautonomous and multilingual region of the Kingdom of Poland.

Copernicus was the child of German-speaking parents and grew up with German as his mother tongue.

Copernicus's family stood against the Teutonic Order and actively supported the city of Torun during the Thirteen Years' War.

Copernicus's father lent money to Poland's King Casimir IV Jagiellon to finance the war against the Teutonic Knights, but the inhabitants of Royal Prussia resisted the Polish crown's efforts for greater control over the region.

Sheila Rabin, writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, describes Copernicus as a "child of a German family [who] was a subject of the Polish crown", while Manfred Weissenbacher writes that Copernicus's father was a Germanized Pole.

Similarly, historian Norman Davies writes that Copernicus, as was common in his era, was "largely indifferent" to nationality, being a local patriot who considered himself "Prussian".