Historical Figure
Nicolaus Copernicus
d. 1543
Mathematician and astronomer (1473–1543)
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Key Dates
Death
1543 May 24, 1543 →Biography
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance polymath who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. The publication of Copernicus's model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution. Though a similar heliocentric model had been developed eighteen centuries earlier by Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer, Copernicus likely arrived at his model independently.
Timeline
Nicolaus Copernicus's book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is banned by the Catholic Church
March 5 →Nicolaus Copernicus's book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is added to the Index of Forbidden Books 73 years after it was first published.
March 5 →In astronomy, Kepler's laws of planetary motion are three scientific laws describing the motion of planets around the Sun. First: The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. Second: A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. Third: The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. Most planetary orbits are almost circles, and careful observation and calculation is required in order to establish that they are actually ellipses. Calculations of the orbit of the planet Mars first indicated to Johannes Kepler its elliptical shape, and he inferred that other heavenly bodies, including those farther away from the Sun, also have elliptical orbits. Kepler's work improved the heliocentric theory of Nicolaus Copernicus, explaining how the planets' speeds varied, and using elliptical orbits rather than circular orbits with epicycles. Isaac Newton showed in 1687 that relationships like Kepler's would apply in the solar system to a good approximation, as consequences of his own laws of motion and law of universal gravitation.
March 8 →More from the Renaissance
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