Copernicus
Nicolas Copernicus Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Physics February 8, 2000 Nicolas Copernicus Nicolas Copernicus 1473-1543 Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473, he started his education at Cracow University. There he studied mathematics and optics. From here he went to Italy, where he was appointed as a canon in the cathedral of Frauenburg, where he spent a comfortable academic life studding. Copernicus had some small hobbies while at the cathedral, he painted, and frequently translated Greek poetry into Latin. One other hobby that just wasn 't small enough to be called a hobby to most of us was astronomy. He made investigations quietly and alone, without any help. He observed from a turret on a protective wall around a cathedral, he also looked with his naked eye rather than with a telescope. He was one of the founders of modern astronomy. Copernicus died in 1543 of a cerebral hemorrhage. In 1530 right before Copernicus died he managed to published his work, De Revolutionibus. Which said that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly. This might no sound very controversial but at this time the church and its followers believed in the Ptolemiac theory, which stated that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical envelope beyond which there was nothing. (Landry 1999) Copernicus 's works went against the church, and most scientific beliefs. This may be one reason why Copernicus didn 't publish his work until his deathbed. Another reason may be that Copernicus was a huge perfectionist, and continuously redid his works over and over to get them right. (Field 1995) So you can see why Copernicus wasn 't in any big rush to have the world know about his theory. On one hand he would cause a Nicolas Copernicus tramoundous stir in the church, and all the scientific community. He would 've most likely have been fired from the comfortable church position he had for many years, and couldve given him a bad name. If it hadn 't
Bibliography: Works Cited Field, J. V. (1995 August). Home page. [Online]. [2000, Feb. 8]. Astronomy 161 "The Solar System" . [Online]. University of Florida. [2000, Feb. 8]. Landry, Peter (1999 June). Home page. [Online]. Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. CANADA. [2000, Feb. 8].