Ni Co ch pe ola rn s icu s

Early life
Nicolaus Copernicus was born on1473, in Poland. After his father's death, when Nicholas was only ten years old, his uncle Lucas Watzenrode took charge of his education. Nicolaus studied the liberal arts for four years including astronomy and astrology. He studied law between 1497 and 1501, and then studied medicine between 1501 and 1503.

Ptolemy said that the Sun and planets revolved around a unmoving Earth. Copernicus became more and more unhappy with this view because the evidence of planetary motion did not seem to support it. He began developing his view that the Earth and other planets revolved around a point in space near the Sun which would be known as the heliocentric theory of

Ptolemy s geocentric theory

Heliocentric thery

The search of the truth

In 1512, he began his major work called the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, which brought together all of his astronomical ideas. The book was finished in 1530, but was not published for many years as Copernicus feared criticism from the scientific and religious communities.

Nicolas Copernicus

Revolutionary ide
Copernicus's major ideas were that the Earth rotates once a day on its axis and revolves once a year around the Sun. Also, the planets encircle the Sun. Copernicus did not get everything right. His ideas that the stars are in fixed positions in a sphere at the edge of the Solar System and that the planets had circular and not elliptical (oval-shaped) orbits we now know are wrong.

Nicholas Copernicus

COPERNICUSS GREAT INFLUENCE Copernicuss ideas were new and revolutionary, and the idea of a moving Earth was difficult for most 16thcentury scholars to accept. For many years after his death his ideas were either ignored or rejected. In the early 17th century, Kepler made precise astronomical studies of the motions of the planets that provided clear scientific evidence to prove Copernicuss heliocentric view of planetary motion was correct. By the late 17th century the Copernican system was the most widely accepted picture of the universe. Nowadays, we know it to be true.

The university in Nicolaus Copernicus's home town of Torun, in central Poland, is now named after him. Nicolaus Copernicus was not the only famous student of the University of Krakw. Pope John Paul II also studied there. All of Copernicus's astronomical observations were undertaken without the use of a telescope. The telescope was invented in the Netherlands in about 1608, which was 65 years after