Biography of Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus
Copernicus was born on 1473 and died on 1543. Nicolaus was born in Torun,
Poland, when he was twelve, Copernicus's parents died. Copernicus was admitted
to a church by his uncle, who was a priest. His uncle gave him an education and
Copernicus attended University at Cracow. Copernicus went to Italy, despite his
full-time career at his church, cathedral of Frauenberg. At Italy Copernicus
studied church law, while also studied astronomy. He witnessed his first
astronomical event in 1497, where he saw the moon pass a start named Aldebaran.
After that in 1500, he witnessed a spectacular event, it was a lunar eclipse. In
1512, Copernicus built an "observatory", which was a tower with no
roof. Copernicus later created his own model and called it the Heliocentric
Model, and had a book called De
Revolutionibus. Copernicus states that celestial bodies around earth only
appear to circle earth because earth is spinning, moving every day for the
whole year.
Nicolaus in 1514, fabricated his
book De Revolutionibus, which was
later published only because of Rheticus's constant begging, even though Nicolaus's
book had a summary of it, that Rheticus made earlier. One of Copernicus's early
supporters, Erasmus Reinhold, made important changes to De Revolutionibus and Copernicus's first set of practical planetary
tables, Tabulae Pruticae. De Revolutionibus was unpopular, this is
because it went against the bible, this is because De Revolutionibus states that the Earth was not in the center of
the solar system, however Copernicus says that the Sun is. A guy named Osiander
was making changes to Copernicus's book. Once under pressure by Martin Luther,
who was fully against the Copernican theory, Osiander made a preface that
gained immense Copernicus look like a fool. Osiander stated that this
heliocentric theory was not actually being presented as a fact. Osiander did
not sagn his name under this preface, making it seem like Copernicus wrote it
and was tearing apart his own theory.. Nicolaus Copernicus's book did not do
well in his era, but in the future it helped many other astronomers such as
Galileo, Kepler, and Brahe. Kepler revealed the truth behind the preface and resurrected
Copernicus's theory of the heliocentric model.
De
Revolutionibus helped Galileo contradict Aristotle's Ptolemaic System,
which was the Earth being in the middle of the Solar System. Galileo was able
to contradict the Ptolemaic system when he saw, Jupiter's moons through his
telescope. This contradicted Ptomemaic and supported the Heliocentric system
because it was known worldwide, that the celestial bodies circled Earth.
Nicolaus started this astronomy
revolution, that made everyone rethink about their ancestors' theories. One
could say the Nicolaus was the matchstick of the revolution. Nicolaus was able
to think outside the box making people from the present and future relate to
Copernicus's theory. Copernicus had almost died from a stroke, and is said that
he was able to see his first copy of his book, De Revolutionibus.
