Nicolaus Copernicus the Renaissance Man:

Astronomer who set earth in a spin

Gaston De Rosayro

Before 1450, nearly everyone thought that the earth was flat and that wheels drove the sun, stars and the moon. People also thought that the earth was the centre of all stars which were stuck in some giant awning that covered the earth. Then along came the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus who proved that the sun was the centre of the solar system and that the sun, earth and the moon were all shaped like round balls.

Nicolaus Copernicus, who died on this very day (May 24, 1543) has his name etched in history as the founder of modern astronomy. Although not the first scientist to propose that the Earth revolved around the sun, his bold return to the theory (first proposed by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd-century BC) had significant and far-reaching effects in the evolution of scientific thought. Born in Thorn, Poland on February 19, 1473, Copernicus was truly a ‘Renaissance Man’ in the original and truest sense of the word.

He was a physician, mathematician, astronomer, classical scholar, economist, administrator, and clergyman. He was involved in a variety of different areas. He held doctorates in medicine and law. He was an astronomer who studied Greek philosophy, mainly Platonic, and was involved in the translation of books from ancient Greek into Latin.

Eternal student

He was the son of a wealthy merchant. After his father’s death, he was raised by his mother’s brother, a bishop in the Catholic Church. Copernicus studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Crakow.

Through his uncle’s influence he was appointed a canon of the Catholic Church. He used the income from the position to help pay for additional studies. Copernicus studied law and medicine at the universities of Bologna, Padua, and Ferrara in Italy. While he was studying at the University of Bologna, his interest in astronomy was stimulated.

Later, at the University of Padua, Copernicus studied medicine, which was closely associated with astrology at that time due to the belief that the stars influenced the dispositions of the body. He finally received a doctorate in canon law from the University of Ferrara, an institution he’d never attended.

Returning to Poland, Copernicus secured a teaching post at Wroclaw, where he primarily worked as a medical doctor and manager of Church affairs. In his spare time, he studied the stars and the planets and applied his mathematical understanding to the mysteries of the night sky. In so doing, he developed his theory of a system in which the Earth, like all the planets, revolved around the sun, and which simply and elegantly explained the curious retrograde movements of the planets.

‘Bare eyeball’ surveillance

Copernicus’ celestial observations were made from a turret situated on the protective wall around the cathedral. His investigations were carried on quietly and alone, without help or consultation. And astonishingly they were made with the naked eye. It was ‘bare eyeball,’ surveillance so to speak, as a hundred more years were to pass before the invention of the telescope. He died more than fifty years before Galileo became the first person to study the skies with a telescope.

From his observations, Copernicus concluded that every planet, including Earth, revolved around the Sun. He also determined that the Earth rotates daily on its axis and that the Earth’s motion affected what people saw in the heavens.

Copernicus did not have the tools to prove his theories. By the 1600s, astronomers such as Galileo would develop the physics that would prove he was correct.

Since 150 AD to the 1500’s, the Ptolemy’s theory prevailed that the earth was the flat centre of the universe that did not rotate or revolve. This theory was well accepted by both scientific and religious communities. Up to the time of Copernicus the thinkers of the western world believed in the Ptolemiac theory that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical envelope beyond which there was nothing.

Because of his clerical position, Copernicus moved in the highest circles of power; but a student he remained. In 1530, Copernicus completed and gave to the world his great work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’). It was his theory which asserted that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and travelled around the sun once yearly - a preposterous concept for the times.

Historians have maintained that Copernicus delayed in publishing his theories for fear of persecution from both the religious and scientific communities. As a modest man, he once stated, “For I am not so enamoured of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them.”

Heliocentric system

At this time Copernicus’ heliocentric system in particular, was outlined in a short manuscript known as the Commentariolus, or small commentary, which he completed about 1512. In it there was a list of seven axioms, all of which stated a feature specific to the heliocentric system. The third stated in particular: “All the spheres revolve about the sun as their midpoint, and therefore the sun is the centre of the universe.”

The Commentariolus produced no reaction, either in print or in letters, but Copernicus’s fame began to spread.

Two years later he turned down an invitation to be present as an astronomer at the Lateran Council, which had the reform (improvement) of the calendar as one of its aims. His secretiveness only seemed to further his reputation. In 1522 the secretary to the King of Poland asked Copernicus to pass an opinion on De motu octavae spherae (‘On the Motion of the Eighth Sphere’), just published by Johann Werner, a mathematician. This time he granted the request in the form of a letter in which he took a rather low opinion of Werner’s work. More important was the closing of the letter, in which Copernicus stated that he intended to present his own opinion about the motion of the stars.

Copernicus could pursue his study only in his spare time. As a canon he was involved in various affairs, including legal and medical, but especially administrative and financial matters.

For all his failure to publish anything in astronomy, his manuscript studies presented in Commentariolus continued to circulate, and more and more was rumoured about his theory.

The book was completed in 1530 or so, but it wasn’t published until the year he died. Legend has it that a copy of the printer’s proof was placed in his hands as he lay in a coma, and he awoke long enough to recognize what he was holding before he died.