Nicolaus Copernicus
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was an astronomer. People know Copernicus for his ideas about the sun and the earth. His main idea was that our world is heliocentric, from helios - sun. He wrote about his theory that the sun was in the middle of the solar system in his epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres).
Copernicus was born in 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn), in Royal Prussia, a region of the Kingdom of Poland. He was taught in Poland and Italy, and spent most of his older life working and researching in Frombork (Frauenburg), Warmia, where he died in 1543.
Copernicus was one of the great polymaths of his age. He was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist, physician, classical scholar, governor, administrator, diplomat, economist, and soldier. During all these jobs, he treated astronomy like a hobby. However, his formula of how the sun rather than the earth is at the center of the universe is thought to be one of the most important scientific hypotheses history. Many people believe it was the beginning of modern astronomy. Also, his original Polish name is Mikołaj Kopernik.
[edit] External links
- Primary Sources
- Works by Nicolaus Copernicus at Project Gutenberg
- De Revolutionibus, autograph manuscript — Full digital facsimile, Jagiellonian University
- Copernicus' letters to various celebrities, among others the King Sigmundus I of Poland - in Polish
- General
- Nicholaus Copernicus Museum in Frombork
- Portraits of Copernicus: Copernicus' face reconstructed; Portrait; Nicolaus Copernicus
- Copernicus and Astrology — Cambridge University: Copernicus had – of course – teachers with astrological activities and his tables were later used by astrologers.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
- Find-A-Grave profile for Nicolaus Copernicus
- 'Body of Copernicus' identified — BBC article including image of Copernicus using facial reconstruction based on located skull
- About De Revolutionibus
- The Copernican Universe from the De Revolutionibus
- De Revolutionibus, 1543 first edition — Full digital facsimile, Lehigh University
- The front page of the De Revolutionibus
- The text of the De Revolutionibus
- A java applet about Retrograde Motion
- Legacy
- Copernicus in Bologna — in Italian
- Chasing Copernicus: The Book Nobody Read — Was One of the Greatest Scientific Works Really Ignored? All Things Considered. NPR
- Copernicus and his Revolutions — A detailed critique of the rhetoric of De Revolutionibus
- Article which discusses Copernicus's debt to the Arabic tradition
- Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń
- German-Polish Cooperations
- German-Polish school project on Copernicus - in German and Polish
- Büro Kopernikus - An initiative of German Federal Cultural Foundation- in German, Polish and English
