biography
| name: |
Copernicus, Nicolas
|
| |
Polish Mikolaj Kopernik
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pronunciation:
[kopernikus]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1473–1543)
|
| biography:
| The founder of modern astronomy, born in Toruń, C Poland. He studied mathematics and optics at Kraców, then canon law at Bologna, before becoming canon of Frombork. His 400-page treatise, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, completed 1530) in which he put forward the theory of the Earth rotating daily about its own axis and annually about the Sun, had a hostile reception when it was published (1543), as it challenged the ancient teaching of the Earth as the centre of the universe. |
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