Nicols Coprnico

(1473 - 1543)
"In the middle of everything is the
sun.
Who in this beautiful temple put
this lamp in a better place, from
which you could lighten it? It was
the

first

important

and

perhaps

scientist

in

most
the

Renaissance stage. He was also:

Cleric,

physician,

lawyer,

economist and astronomer. He

studied in Krakow and Bologna. In 1500, Copernicus doctorated in
astronomy in Rome. The following year he obtained permission to
study medicine at Padua (the university where Galileo gave classes,
almost a century later). Always was interested in the problems
presented by the geocentric planetary model, which had its roots in
Ptolemy's Almagest. Then around 1514 he had already outlined an
alternative paradigm, a solar system with a fixed sun in the center, and
where the Earth and the other planets were revolving around it, also
the Moon was orbiting our planet. Just before his death in 1543 he
published his theory in De revolutionibus orbium caelestium ("On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), at the beginning, his
heliocentric theory did not generate much interest or controversy, but
half a century later, with the favorable 'observations Brahe, Kepler and
Galileo (and telescope) reached important deductions that generated
the call to give foot Copernican revolution in cosmology.