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Have you noticed that the streets of Myville are all named after
famous scientists and artists from the Renaissance? In case these
folks aren't so famous to you, you might want to follow along this series of
articles, and get to know the person on whose street you're living.
This week's article is about Nicolaus Copernicus, who is one of the greatest astronomers of
all time.
by Lois Lee
Times
Staff
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Have you ever wondered
why the sun rises and sets? Or why the days are light and the nights
are dark? The answers to these questions were first figured out by
Copernicus.
Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Poland in 1473. His uncle paid for him
to go to several colleges in Italy where he studied liberal arts,
medicine and law. After getting his degrees, he got a job as a lawyer
in Frauenberg, near where he was born. There, he became interested in
astronomy, which is the study of the stars and planets.
From the roof of the cathedral in Frauenberg, he watched the stars and
planets at night. He wrote down what he saw every night. From these
observations, he concluded that the earth rotates once daily and that
the spinning of the earth causes the sun to "rise and set" on the
horizon. It then also made sense that when a person is on the side of
the earth facing the sun it is light out and when a person is on the
side of the earth not facing the sun it is dark. Even more stunning at
the time, Copernicus concluded that the earth rotated around the sun
once a year.
Aftering working on his research for over 30 years, he wrote his ideas
in a book called De Revoluntionbus Orbium Coelestium (On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which was published in 1543, the
year he died.
The idea that the Earth revolved around the sun was new, and upset many
people. At the time everyone believed that the earth did not move and
that everything else in the sky rotated around the earth. (In other
words, they believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe).
Click here
or here to learn more about Nicolaus Copernicus.
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