Niklaus copernicus biography

I recently wrote a post concerning the problems historians can and do face assigning a nationality to figures from the past that they are studying. In the history of science one of the most contentious figures in this sense was and apparently still is the Renaissance astronomer Nicolas Copernicus. The question of his nationality produced a massive war of words between Poland and Germany, both of whom claim him as their own, which started in the late eighteenth century and unfortunately still rumbles on today.

Today is Copernicus’ birthday (19 February 1473) and all over the Internet British and American posters are being, what they see as, scrupulously, politically correct and announcing today as the birthday of the Polish astronomer… All very well but it isn’t factually right.

Nicolas Copernicus was born in the city of Toruń, which is today in Poland but wasn’t at the time of his birth. The whole area in which Copernicus was born and in which he lived for all of his life, except when he was away studying at university, was highly dispute territory over which several wars were fought. Between 1454 and 1466 the Thirteen Years’ War was fought between the Prussian Confederation allied with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the State of the Teutonic Knights. This war ended with the Second Peace of Toruń under which Toruń remained a free city now under the patronage of the Polish King.

As I pointed out in an earlier post Copernicus spent all of his adult life, after graduating from university, as a citizen of Ermland (Warmia), which was then an autonomous Prince Bishopric ruled by the Bishop of Frombork and the canons of the cathedral chapter, of which Copernicus was one.

All of this means that Copernicus was neither German nor Polish but was born a citizen of Toruń and died a citizen of Ermland. I realise that this doesn’t fit

Nicolaus Copernicus proposed his theory that the planets revolved around the sun in the 1500s, when most people believed that Earth was the center of the universe. Although his model wasn't completely correct, it formed a strong foundation for future scientists, such as Galileo, to build on and improve humanity's understanding of the motion of heavenly bodies.

Indeed, other astronomers built on Copernicus' work and proved that our planet is just one world orbiting one star in a vast cosmos loaded with both, and that we're far from the center of anything.

Countdown: The most famous astronomers of all time

Education

Born on Feb. 19, 1473, in Toruń, Poland, Mikolaj Kopernik (Copernicus is the Latinized form of his name) traveled to Italy to attend college, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Copernicus' father had died when the child was young, and his uncle became a leading figure in his life.

Copernicus' uncle wanted him to study the laws and regulations of the Catholic Church then return home to become a canon, a type of official in the Catholic Church.

However, while visiting several academic institutions, Copernicus spent most of his time studying mathematics and astronomy. While attending the University of Bologna, Copernicus lived and worked with astronomy professor Domenico Maria de Novara, doing research and helping him make observations of the heavens.

Due to his uncle's influence, Copernicus did become a canon in Warmia, in northern Poland, although he never took orders as a priest. He conducted his astronomical research in between his duties as canon, the Encyclopedia Britannica noted.

The Copernican model of the solar system

In Copernicus' lifetime, most believed that Earth held its place at the center of the universe. The sun, the stars, and all of the planets revolved around it.

One of the glaring mathematical problems with this model was that the planet

Mathematician and astronomer (1473–1543)

"Copernicus" and "Kopernik" redirect here. For other uses, see Copernicus (disambiguation).

Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissancepolymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholiccanon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. Copernicus likely developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.

The publication of Copernicus's model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), 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 semiautonomous and multilingual region created within the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland from part of the lands regained from the Teutonic Order after the Thirteen Years' War. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. From 1497 he was a WarmianCathedral chaptercanon. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money—a key concept in economics—and in 1519 he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law.

Life

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn), in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, to German-speaking parents.

His father was a merchant from Kraków and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń merchant. Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. His brother An