“To know that we know

what we know, and to

know that we do not
know what we do not
know, that is true
knowledge”.
NICOLAUS
- Nicolaus C.

COPERNICUS
WHO IS NICOLAUS COPERNICUS??
Nicolaus Copernicus

Born: 19 February 1473, Torun (thorn),

Royal Prussia, Kingdom of Poland

Died: 24 May 1543 (aged 70)

Known For: Heliocentrism, Quantity

Theory of money, Gresham-Copernicus
Law
Was a renaissance-era
Mathematician and Astronomer, who
formulated a model of the universe
that placed the sun rather than Earth
at the center of the universe, in all
likelihood independently of
Aristarchus of Samos, who had
formulated such a model some
eighteen centuries earlier.
 Contribution
Nicolaus Copernicus is not famous of his contributions to
reproductive science, but rather for his contribution to
ASTRONOMY.
His famous theory was that it was the sun at the center of the
universe, rather than the Earth. Although there were limitations
to the Copernican model, it was an absolute breakthrough idea.
One such limitation was the fact that he still used the universe-
based model, rather than a solar system based one. In fact, our
sun is at the center of our solar system, and definitely not the
universe, or even the galaxy.
WHO CAN DIFFERENTIATE?

HELIOCENTRIC
&
GEOCENTRIC
His theory was Heliocentric (sun-centered) rather than
Geocentric (earth-centered). The Geocentric model is
also called the Ptolemaic model, after the Greek
Philosopher Ptolemy. Decades after he first came up
with the Heliocentric theory, Copernicus published his
ideas in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ( On the
revolutions of the Celestial Spheres). It summarized
the theory. Besides the idea that everything orbited
the sun rather than the earth, the significant parts
included the idea that retrograde and direct motion
could be explained by the rotation of the earth, the
idea that there is no one center of all the celestial
circles and spheres, and the idea that the earth has
more than one motion (orbiting the sun, as well as
rotating around). Most of these ended up being TRUE,
 Copernicus’s heliocentric theory began what
became known as the Copernican Revolution,
sparking the ideas and experiments of later
scientist like Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.
Most significantly, Kepler modified Copernicus’s
theory from perfect circles to ellipses, and thus
solved many issues with the original model–
especialy the ones having to do with retrograde
motion.
Tycho Brahe
Johannes Kepler
Claudius Ptolemy
 Copernicus came up with this theory because:

 In Copernicus’ lifetime, MOST believed that earth held

its place at the center of the universe. The sun, the
stars and all of the planets revolve around it.
 In 1514, Copernicus distributed a hand written book to
his friends that set out of his view of the universe. In it,
he proposed that the center of the universe was not
Earth, but that the sun lay near it. He also suggested
that Earth’s rotation accounted for the rise and setting
of the sun, the movement of the stars, and that the
cycle of seasons was caused by the Earth’s revolutions
around it.
 Finally, he correctly proposed that earth’s motion
through space caused the retrograde motions of the
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