NICOLAUS COPERNICUS

COPERNICUS LIFE

born in a merchant rich family on the 19 February

1473, but at the age of 10 he became an orphan
and his maternal uncle took care of him
was elected a canon of the cathedral chapter of
Frombork

COPERNICUS EDUCATION

first studied astronomy, astrology and

mathematics at the University of Cracow (149194). No evidence of degree attainded
studied medicine at the University of Padua
(1501-3)
University of Ferrara where he obtained a
doctorate in Canon Law (1503)

LATER YEARS
He returned to Varmia, where he was based for the rest of his life. He
acted as medical advisor and secretary to his uncle at Heilsberg
In 1514, the Lateran Council sought Copernicus's opinion on
calendar reform
By the 1530s, Copernicus's reputation as a skilled mathematician
had even reached the ears of the Pope
Copernicus shared his ideas with Rheticus then he published the
Narratio Prima (First Report on the Books of Revolution) in 1540 at
Gdansk, in which he reported Copernicus' heliostatic theory in an
astrological framework

HELIOCENTRI
C MODEL

HELIOCENTRIC MODEL

theory proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus

"helios" in Greek means "sun." Heliocentric
means that the sun is at the center.
A heliocentric system is one in which the
planets revolve around a fixed sun.

HELIOCENTRIC MODEL
He first published the
heliocentric system in his
book:De revolutionibus
orbium coelestium, "On
the revolutions of the
heavenly bodies," which
appeared in 1543.

HELIOCENTRIC MODEL

Copernicus proposed that the Sun,

not the Earth, was the center of the
Solar System

In this new ordering, the

earth is just another planet
(the third outward from the
sun), and the moon is in orbit
around the earth, not the
sun. The stars are distant
objects that do not revolve
around the sun. Instead, the
earth is assumed to rotate
once in 24 hours, causing the
stars to appear to revolve
around the earth in the
opposite direction.