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Early life

Nicolaus Copernicus wasborn on1473, in Poland. After

his father's death, whenNicholas was only ten years

old, his uncle LucasWatzenrode took charge of his education.

Nicolaus studied the liberalarts for four years includingastronomy and astrology.

He studied law between1497 and 1501, and thenstudied medicine between

1501 and 1503.

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Ptolemy said that the Sunand planets revolved arounda unmoving Earth.

Copernicus became moreand more unhappy with thisview because the evidenceof planetary motion did not

seem to support it. He begandeveloping his view that theEarth and other planetsrevolved around a point inspace near the Sun which

would be known as the“heliocentric theory of 

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Ptolemy ‘s geocentric theory

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Heliocentric

thery

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he search of the truth

In 1512, he began hismajor work called the

Revolutions of theCelestial Spheres,

which broughttogether all of his

astronomical ideas.

 The book was finishedin 1530, but was notpublished for many

years as Copernicusfeared criticism fromthe scientific and

religious communities.

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http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/nicola-1 8/13Nicolas CopernicusNicolas Copernicus

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Revolutionary idCopernicus's major ideaswere that the Earth rotatesonce a day on its axis andrevolves once a year aroundthe Sun. Also, the planets

encircle the Sun.

Copernicus did not geteverything right.

His ideas that the stars are in

fixed positions in a sphere atthe edge of the Solar Systemand that the planets hadcircular and not elliptical(oval-shaped) orbits we nowknow are wrong.

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COPERNICUS’S GREAT INFLUENCE

Copernicus’s ideas were new and revolutionary, andthe idea of a moving Earth was difficult for most 16th-century scholars to accept. For many years after hisdeath his ideas were either ignored or rejected.

In the early 17th century, Kepler made preciseastronomical studies of the motions of the planets thatprovided clear scientific evidence to proveCopernicus’s heliocentric view of planetary motion

was correct.By the late 17th century the Copernican system wasthe most widely accepted picture of the universe.Nowadays, we know it to be true.

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• The university in Nicolaus Copernicus's hometown of Torun, in central Poland, is now namedafter him.

• Nicolaus Copernicus was not the only famousstudent of the University of Kraków. Pope JohnPaul II also studied there.

• All of Copernicus's astronomical observationswere undertaken without the use of a telescope.

 The telescope was invented in the Netherlands

in about 1608, which was 65 years after

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