Profile of the Day: Nicolaus Copernicus

Today we remember astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born on this day in 1473. Before Copernicus, the world believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus’s revelation that planets actually revolved around the sun, transformed scientific thought throughout the world.

Image: Nicolaus Copernicus / Wikimedia Commons

Copernicus was born in Toruń in northern Poland into a wealthy merchant family. With a keen interest in astrology and astronomy, Copernicus began to studied under astronomer Domenico Maria de Novara, who exposed him to early criticisms of the Earth-centered Ptolemaic system.

Just before his death, Copernicus published his groundbreaking heliocentric model of the universe, which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at its center. Although his controversial findings were declared heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, Copernicus’s theories laid the basis for the Scientific Revolution yet to come.

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