Copernicus' theories spark scientific revolution
In a letter to German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) wrote in 1596:
“I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypotheses. … I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid).”
The concept that Earth was not at the center of all known things forced the Western world to re-evaluate many precepts, scientific, cultural and religious. In 150, Claudius Ptolemy, who was an Egyptian scholar living under Roman rule and writing in Greek, published his “Almagest,” which described a spherical universe with an unmoving Earth at its center.
When Nicolaus Copernicus was born on Feb. 19, 1473, in Thorn, Poland, knowledge was hoarded by the Church — written, copied and shared only with the favored. Copernicus was one of those favored; he was the youngest of four children born to a successful copper merchant. His mother came from a powerful family, and her brother Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, Prince-Bishop of Warmia, would become Copernicus’ patron after his parents died, probably when Copernicus was between 10 and 12. He was educated in mathematics, astronomy and philosophy at the University of Krakow (founded in 1364). He left the university in 1495, when his uncle, who became prince-bishop in 1489, sought to install Copernicus in a vacant canonry. Church politics delayed the appointment for a couple of years, and Watzenrode sent Copernicus and his brother to study in Italy. They studied canon law in Bologna, and Copernicus went on to study medicine at the University of Padua. Though he studied canon law, Copernicus may have been more attracted to the humanist and scientific luminaries in Bologna, which included astronomer Dominica Maria Novara da Ferrara, critic of Ptolemy’s model as too complex. Copernicus recorded his first astronomical observation in 1497 with his teacher.
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