The Copernican Revolution

Abstract

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 14, 1473 in the Polish city of Torun and died in Frauenburg on May 24, 1543. He studied mathematics, theology and astronomy in the universities of Italy, Bologna, Padua-Ferrara and in Poland, University of Krakow. In these centers of study he became acquainted with the writings of the Greek astronomers of antiquity, especially those of Aristarchus of Samos. For several years he was a professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna and returned to Poland to settle permanently in the city of Frauenburg, where he made most of his observations and astronomical works. The results of his investigations are present in his two works: "Commentariolus" and "De revolutionibus orbium caelestium". In both works he expounds his ideas of the Heliocentric System that contradict the Geocentric System of Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer based in Alexandria. Copernicus stated that the earth moves around the sun and revolves around its axis, originating the succession of day and night. Some years after his death, these ideas were condemned as heretical, not only by the Catholic Church, but also by the Protestant Churches, especially those founded by Luther and Calvin. However, the Heliocentric System was later demonstrated by the astronomers Galileo Galilei and John Kepler in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.