Mikołaj Kopernik (1473–1543,) Latinized name Nicolaus Copernicus, was a Polish astronomer and mathematician. He discovered the heliocentric ordering of the planets– the universe’s model that placed the sun, not the earth, at the center of the universe.
Born in Torun, about 100 miles south of Gdańsk, Copernicus studied church (canon) law and medicine at the University of Kraków 1491–94. He did not attend any astronomy classes, but during his student years, Copernicus began to collect books on astronomy and mathematics. While still a student, he proposed a solar system model in which the planets orbited in uniform speeds in circular orbits around the sun. This view was heretical because the Catholic Church regarded the geocentric cosmology of Aristotle and Greek astronomer Ptolemy as consistent with its theological doctrines.
Copernicus set down his basic ideas around 1510 in the Commentariolus, which was disseminated anonymously. Between 1512 and 1529, he made the observations that he needed to support his theory while being employed as a clergy member.
Copernicus published his astronomical theories in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543; ‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.’) However, the Copernican model insisted on the uniform circular motion for the planets primarily for aesthetic reasons. The Copernican Revolution was later completed by Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler (who accurately adjusted the theory by making the planets’ orbits elliptical and justifying their non-uniform speeds,) and Isaac Newton.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Nicolaus Copernicus
I am not so enamored of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. … Yet I hold that completely erroneous views should be shunned.
—Nicolaus Copernicus
For a long time then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe’s spheres. I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world. For this reason I undertook the task of rereading the works of all the philosophers which I could obtain to learn whether anyone had ever proposed other motions of the universe’s spheres than those expounded by the teachers of astronomy in the schools. And in fact I found in Cicero that Hicetas supposed the earth to move. Later I also discovered in Plutarch that certain others were of this opinion. . . . Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth.
—Nicolaus Copernicus
Let no one expect anything of certainty from astronomy, lest if anyone take as true that which has been constructed for another use, he go away…bigger fool than when he came to it.
—Nicolaus Copernicus
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