Born in 1473 to a family of merchants in Torun, Royal Prussia, part of the Kingdom of Poland, Nicolaus Copernicus read humanities at the University of Krakow, where he also attended lessons in medicine, law, mathematics and astronomy. He continued his studies in Bologna under Domenico Maria Novara, a renowned astronomer with whom he made his first observations of eclipses and lunar occultations. After four years in Italy, in 1500 Copernicus returned to Poland where he was installed as a canon and as administrator of the Warmian Chapter’s property in Olsztyn. This position, which involved no religious duties, allowed Copernicus time to continue his astronomical studies from the observatory in Frombork, the town in northern Poland where he spent most of his life.
Nicolaus Copernicus
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Copernicus develops the heliocentric theory whereby Earth rotates around its axis with the Moon as its satellite and all the planets orbit the Sun.
Since Classical antiquity and the theories of Ptolemy and Aristotle, the geocentric model had placed Earth at the centre of the universe. This hypothesis, already questioned by scholars such as Aristarchus of Samos (third century BCE), was also challenged by Copernicus, who developed his ideas in two reference works: the Commentariolus, which he wrote between 1511 and 1513, and De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium (“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”), completed circa 1530 but not published until 1543, shortly before his death. In both, Copernicus describes his heliocentric theory whereby Earth rotates around its axis with the Moon as its satellite and all the planets orbit the Sun. Fully aware of the Church’s intransigeance regarding geocentrism, Copernicus kept his ideas quiet. Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci and Kepler would become more vociferous proponents of the heliocentric model.
c. 1513
Copernicus outlined the principles of heliocentrism in his first, anonymous, treatise on astronomy, now known as the Commentariolus.
c. 1530
Completed his seminal work, De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium.
1543
Publication in Nuremberg of De revolutionibus orbium cœlestium, shortly before Copernicus’s death.