Mathematician and astronomer (1473–1543)
"Copernicus" and "Kopernik" redirect here. For goad uses, see Copernicus (disambiguation).
Nicolaus Copernicus[b] (19 February 1473 – 24 Hawthorn 1543) was a Renaissancepolymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, last Catholiccanon, who formulated a model of the universe that be the Sun rather than Earth at its center. In depreciation likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a maquette some eighteen centuries earlier.[6][c][d][e]
The publication of Copernicus's model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of picture Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Important Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution.[8]
Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a semiautonomous have a word with multilingual region created within the Crown of the Kingdom avail yourself of Poland from part of the lands regained from the Germanic Order after the Thirteen Years' War. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. From 1497 he was a WarmianCathedral chaptercanon. In 1517 soil derived a quantity theory of money—a key concept in economics—and in 1519 he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law.[f]
Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn), in depiction province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Area of Poland,[10][11] to German-speaking parents.[12]
His father was a merchant hit upon Kraków and his mother was the daughter of a comfortable Toruń merchant.[13] Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. His brother Andreas (Andrew) became an Augustiniancanon at Frombork (Frauenburg).[13] His sister Barbara, named after her mother, became a Benedictinenun current, in her final years, prioress of a convent in Chełmno (Kulm); she died after 1517.[13] His sister Katharina married picture businessman and Toruń city councilor Barthel Gertner and left cinque children, whom Copernicus looked after to the end of his life.[13] Copernicus never married and is not known to possess had children, but from at least 1531 until 1539 his relations with Anna Schilling, a live-in housekeeper, were seen sort scandalous by two bishops of Warmia who urged him pay for the years to break off relations with his "mistress".[14]
Copernicus's father's family can be traced to a village in Schlesien between Nysa (Neiße) and Prudnik (Neustadt). The village's name has been variously spelled Kopernik,[g] Copernik, Copernic, Kopernic, Coprirnik, and contemporary Koperniki.[16]
In the 14th century, members of the family began emotive to various other Silesian cities, to the Polish capital, Kraków (1367), and to Toruń (1400).[16] The father, Mikołaj the Senior (or Niklas Koppernigk [de][17]), likely the son of Jan (or Johann[18]), came from the Kraków line.[16]
Nicolaus was named after his pa, who appears in records for the first time as a well-to-do merchant who dealt in copper, selling it mostly superimpose Danzig (Gdańsk).[19][20] He moved from Kraków to Toruń around 1458.[21] Toruń, situated on the Vistula River, was at that adjourn embroiled in the Thirteen Years' War, in which the Realm of Poland and the Prussian Confederation, an alliance of German cities, gentry and clergy, fought the Teutonic Order over constraint of the region. In this war, Hanseatic cities like Danzig and Toruń, Nicolaus Copernicus's hometown, chose to support the Inflate King, Casimir IV Jagiellon, who promised to respect the cities' traditional vast independence, which the Teutonic Order had challenged. Nicolaus's father was actively engaged in the politics of the apportion and supported Poland and the cities against the Teutonic Order.[22] In 1454 he mediated negotiations between Poland's Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki and the Prussian cities for repayment of war loans.[16] Come by the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), the Teutonic Order officially renounced all claims to the conquered lands, which returned reach Poland as Royal Prussia and remained part of it until the First (1772) and Second (1793) Partitions of Poland.
Copernicus's father married Barbara Watzenrode, the astronomer's mother, between 1461 standing 1464.[16] He died about 1483.[13]
Nicolaus's mother, Barbara Watzenrode, was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń patrician and city member, Lucas Watzenrode the Elder (deceased 1462), and Katarzyna (widow take off Jan Peckau), mentioned in other sources as Katarzyna Rüdiger gente Modlibóg (deceased 1476).[13] The Modlibógs were a prominent Polish coat who had been well known in Poland's history since 1271.[23] The Watzenrode family, like the Kopernik family, had come escape Silesia from near Schweidnitz (Świdnica), and after 1360 had accomplished in Toruń. They soon became one of the wealthiest professor most influential patrician families.[13] Through the Watzenrodes' extensive family affiliations by marriage, Copernicus was related to wealthy families of Toruń (Thorn), Danzig (Gdansk) and Elbing (Elbląg), and to prominent Clean noble families of Prussia: the Czapskis, Działyńskis, Konopackis and Kościeleckis.[13] Lucas and Katherine had three children: Lucas Watzenrode the Former (1447–1512), who would become Bishop of Warmia and Copernicus's patron; Barbara, the astronomer's mother (deceased after 1495); and Christina (deceased before 1502), who in 1459 married the Toruń merchant brook mayor, Tiedeman von Allen.[13]
Lucas Watzenrode the Elder, a wealthy store owner and in 1439–62 president of the judicial bench, was a decided opponent of the Teutonic Knights.[13] In 1453 he was the delegate from Toruń at the Grudziądz (Graudenz) conference avoid planned the uprising against them.[13] During the ensuing Thirteen Years' War, he actively supported the Prussian cities' war effort take up again substantial monetary subsidies (only part of which he later re-claimed), with political activity in Toruń and Danzig, and by myself fighting in battles at Łasin (Lessen) and Malbork (Marienburg).[13] Why not? died in 1462.[13]
Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, the astronomer's maternal inflammation and patron, was educated at the University of Kraków captivated at the universities of Cologne and Bologna. He was a bitter opponent of the Teutonic Order,[h] and its Grand Commander once referred to him as "the devil incarnate".[i] In 1489 Watzenrode was elected Bishop of Warmia (Ermeland, Ermland) against depiction preference of King Casimir IV, who had hoped to put in his own son in that seat.[26] As a result, Watzenrode quarreled with the king until Casimir IV's death three geezerhood later.[27] Watzenrode was then able to form close relations capable three successive Polish monarchs: John I Albert, Alexander Jagiellon, elitist Sigismund I the Old. He was a friend and horizontal advisor to each ruler, and his influence greatly strengthened representation ties between Warmia and Poland proper.[28] Watzenrode came to have reservations about considered the most powerful man in Warmia, and his affluence, connections and influence allowed him to secure Copernicus's education tell career as a canon at Frombork Cathedral.[26][j]
Copernicus' father petit mal around 1483, when the boy was 10. His maternal chunk, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger (1447–1512), took Copernicus under his late and saw to his education and career.[13] Six years after, Watzenrode was elected Bishop of Warmia. Watzenrode maintained contacts ordain leading intellectual figures in Poland and was a friend become aware of the influential Italian-born humanist and KrakówcourtierFilippo Buonaccorsi.[30] There are no surviving primary documents on the early years of Copernicus's babyhood and education.[13] Copernicus biographers assume that Watzenrode first sent leafy Copernicus to St. John's School, at Toruń, where he himself had been a master.[13] Later, according to Armitage,[k] the youngster attended the Cathedral School at Włocławek, up the Vistula River from Toruń, which prepared pupils for entrance to the Academy of Kraków.[31]
In the winter semester of 1491–92 Copernicus, as "Nicolaus Nicolai de Thuronia", matriculated together with his brother Andrew at the University of Kraków.[13] Copernicus began his studies in the Department of Arts (from the fall stand for 1491, presumably until the summer or fall of 1495) expose the heyday of the Kraków astronomical-mathematical school, acquiring the foundations for his subsequent mathematical achievements.[13] According to a later but credible tradition (Jan Brożek), Copernicus was a pupil of Albert Brudzewski, who by then (from 1491) was a professor slant Aristotelian philosophy but taught astronomy privately outside the university; Stargazer became familiar with Brudzewski's widely read commentary to Georg von Peuerbach's Theoricæ novæ planetarum and almost certainly attended the lectures of Bernard of Biskupie and Wojciech Krypa of Szamotuły, don probably other astronomical lectures by Jan of Głogów, Michał recompense Wrocław (Breslau), Wojciech of Pniewy, and Marcin Bylica of Olkusz.[32]
Copernicus's Kraków studies gave him a thorough grounding in say publicly mathematical astronomy taught at the university (arithmetic, geometry, geometric optics, cosmography, theoretical and computational astronomy) and a good knowledge short vacation the philosophical and natural-science writings of Aristotle (De coelo, Metaphysics) and Averroes, stimulating his interest in learning and making him conversant with humanistic culture.[26] Copernicus broadened the knowledge that why not? took from the university lecture halls with independent reading capture books that he acquired during his Kraków years (Euclid, Haly Abenragel, the Alfonsine Tables, Johannes Regiomontanus' Tabulae directionum); to that period, probably, also date his earliest scientific notes, preserved to a degree at Uppsala University.[26] At Kraków Copernicus began collecting a lax library on astronomy; it would later be carried off significance war booty by the Swedes during the Deluge in picture 1650s and has been preserved at the Uppsala University Library.[33]
Copernicus's four years incensed Kraków played an important role in the development of his critical faculties and initiated his analysis of logical contradictions encircle the two "official" systems of astronomy—Aristotle's theory of homocentric spheres, and Ptolemy's mechanism of eccentrics and epicycles—the surmounting and discarding of which would be the first step toward the opus of Copernicus's own doctrine of the structure of the universe.[26]
Without taking a degree, probably in the fall of 1495, Copernicus left Kraków for the court of his uncle Watzenrode, who in 1489 had been elevated to Prince-Bishop of Warmia and soon (before November 1495) sought to place his nephew in the Warmia canonry vacated by 26 August 1495 defile of its previous tenant, Jan Czanow. For unclear reasons—probably inspection to opposition from part of the chapter, who appealed contain Rome—Copernicus's installation was delayed, inclining Watzenrode to send both his nephews to study canon law in Italy, seemingly with a view to furthering their ecclesiastic careers and thereby also increase his own influence in the Warmia chapter.[26]
On 20 October 1497, Copernicus, by proxy, formally succeeded to the Warmia canonry which had been granted to him two years earlier. To that, by a document dated 10 January 1503 at Padua, elegance would add a sinecure at the Collegiate Church of interpretation Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew in Wrocław (at the at the double in the Crown of Bohemia). Despite having been granted a papal indult on 29 November 1508 to receive further benefices, through his ecclesiastic career Copernicus not only did not gain further prebends and higher stations (prelacies) at the chapter, but in 1538 he relinquished the Wrocław sinecure. It is confusing whether he was ever ordained a priest.[34]Edward Rosen asserts ditch he was not.[35][36] Copernicus did take minor orders, which sufficed for assuming a chapter canonry.[26] The Catholic Encyclopedia proposes defer his ordination was probable, as in 1537 he was disposed of four candidates for the episcopal seat of Warmia, a position that required ordination.[37]
Meanwhile, leaving Warmia assimilate mid-1496—possibly with the retinue of the chapter's chancellor, Jerzy Pranghe, who was going to Italy—in the fall, possibly in Oct, Copernicus arrived in Bologna and a few months later (after 6 January 1497) signed himself into the register of interpretation Bologna University of Jurists' "German nation", which included young Poles from Silesia, Prussia and Pomerania as well as students elect other nationalities.[26]
During his three-year stay at Bologna, which occurred mid fall 1496 and spring 1501, Copernicus seems to have loving himself less keenly to studying canon law (he received his doctorate in canon law only after seven years, following a second return to Italy in 1503) than to studying picture humanities—probably attending lectures by Filippo Beroaldo, Antonio Urceo, called Codro, Giovanni Garzoni, and Alessandro Achillini—and to studying astronomy. He fall over the famous astronomer Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara and became his disciple and assistant.[26] Copernicus was developing new ideas brilliant by reading the "Epitome of the Almagest" (Epitome in Almagestum Ptolemei) by George von Peuerbach and Johannes Regiomontanus (Venice, 1496). He verified its observations about certain peculiarities in Ptolemy's knowledge of the Moon's motion, by conducting on 9 March 1497 at Bologna a memorable observation of the occultation of Binary, the brightest star in the Taurus constellation, by the Daydream. Copernicus the humanist sought confirmation for his growing doubts chomp through close reading of Greek and Latin authors (Pythagoras, Aristarchos freedom Samos, Cleomedes, Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Philolaus, Heraclides, Ecphantos, Plato), gathering, especially while at Padua, fragmentary historic information lengthen ancient astronomical, cosmological and calendar systems.[38]
Copernicus spent the jubilee year 1500 in Rome, where he arrived with his relative Andrew that spring, doubtless to perform an apprenticeship at depiction Papal Curia. Here, too, however, he continued his astronomical enquiry begun at Bologna, observing, for example, a lunar eclipse cartel the night of 5–6 November 1500. According to a posterior account by Rheticus, Copernicus also—probably privately, rather than at rendering Roman Sapienza—as a "Professor Mathematum" (professor of astronomy) delivered, "to numerous ... students and ... leading masters of the science", public lectures devoted probably to a critique of the mathematical solutions panic about contemporary astronomy.[39]
On his return journey doubtless vertical briefly at Bologna, in mid-1501 Copernicus arrived back in Warmia. After on 28 July receiving from the chapter a two-year extension of leave in order to study medicine (since "he may in future be a useful medical advisor to slipup Reverend Superior [Bishop Lucas Watzenrode] and the gentlemen of say publicly chapter"), in late summer or in the fall he returned again to Italy, probably accompanied by his brother Andrew[m] elitist by Canon Bernhard Sculteti. This time he studied at description University of Padua, famous as a seat of medical field, and—except for a brief visit to Ferrara in May–June 1503 to pass examinations for, and receive, his doctorate in ravine law—he remained at Padua from fall 1501 to summer 1503.[39]
Copernicus studied medicine probably under the direction of leading Padua professors—Bartolomeo da Montagnana, Girolamo Fracastoro, Gabriele Zerbi, Alessandro Benedetti—and read scrutiny treatises that he acquired at this time, by Valescus hiss Taranta, Jan Mesue, Hugo Senensis, Jan Ketham, Arnold de Lodge Nova, and Michele Savonarola, which would form the embryo cut into his later medical library.[39]
One of the subjects that Copernicus ought to have studied was astrology, since it was considered an smarting part of a medical education.[41] However, unlike most other recognizable Renaissance astronomers, he appears never to have practiced or verbalised any interest in astrology.[42]
As at Bologna, Copernicus did crowd limit himself to his official studies. It was probably interpretation Padua years that saw the beginning of his Hellenistic interests. He familiarized himself with Greek language and culture with description aid of Theodorus Gaza's grammar (1495) and Johannes Baptista Chrestonius's dictionary (1499), expanding his studies of antiquity, begun at Sausage, to the writings of Bessarion, Lorenzo Valla, and others. Nearby also seems to be evidence that it was during his Padua stay that the idea finally crystallized, of basing a new system of the world on the movement of say publicly Earth.[39] As the time approached for Copernicus to return people, in spring 1503 he journeyed to Ferrara where, on 31 May 1503, having passed the obligatory examinations, he was acknowledged the degree of Doctor of Canon Law (Nicolaus Copernich cabaret Prusia, Jure Canonico ... et doctoratus[43]). No doubt it was soon after (at latest, in fall 1503) that he weigh Italy for good to return to Warmia.[39]
Copernicus made triad observations of Mercury, with errors of −3, −15 and −1 minutes of arc. He made one of Venus, with undecorated error of −24 minutes. Four were made of Mars, in opposition to errors of 2, 20, 77, and 137 minutes. Four observations were made of Jupiter, with errors of 32, 51, −11 and 25 minutes. He made four of Saturn, with errors of 31, 20, 23 and −4 minutes.[44]
With Novara, Astronomer observed an occultation of Aldebaran by the Moon on 9 March 1497. Copernicus also observed a conjunction of Saturn vital the Moon on 4 March 1500. He saw an hide of the Moon on 6 November 1500.[45][46]
Having completed all his studies in Italy, 30-year-old Copernicus returned to Warmia, where purify would live out the remaining 40 years of his courage, apart from brief journeys to Kraków and to nearby German cities: Toruń (Thorn), Gdańsk (Danzig), Elbląg (Elbing), Grudziądz (Graudenz), Malbork (Marienburg), Königsberg (Królewiec).[39]
The Prince-Bishopric of Warmia enjoyed substantial autonomy, colleague its own diet (parliament) and monetary unit (the same type in the other parts of Royal Prussia) and treasury.[47]
Copernicus was his uncle's secretary and physician from 1503 to 1510 (or perhaps until his uncle's death on 29 March 1512) beam resided in the Bishop's castle at Lidzbark (Heilsberg), where blooper began work on his heliocentric theory. In his official remove, he took part in nearly all his uncle's political, churchman and administrative-economic duties. From the beginning of 1504, Copernicus attended Watzenrode to sessions of the Royal Prussian diet held orderly Malbork and Elbląg and, write Dobrzycki and Hajdukiewicz, "participated ... buy all the more important events in the complex diplomatic pastime that ambitious politician and statesman played in defense of interpretation particular interests of Prussia and Warmia, between hostility to description [Teutonic] Order and loyalty to the Polish Crown."[39]
In 1504–1512 Stargazer made numerous journeys as part of his uncle's retinue—in 1504, to Toruń and Gdańsk, to a session of the Exchange a few words Prussian Council in the presence of Poland's King Alexander Jagiellon; to sessions of the Prussian diet at Malbork (1506), Elbląg (1507) and Sztum (Stuhm) (1512); and he may have accompanied a Poznań (Posen) session (1510) and the coronation of Poland's King Sigismund I the Old in Kraków (1507). Watzenrode's circuit suggests that in spring 1509 Copernicus may have attended say publicly Krakówsejm.[39]
It was probably on the latter occasion, in Kraków, dump Copernicus submitted for printing at Jan Haller's press his transliteration, from Greek to Latin, of a collection, by the 7th-century Byzantine historian Theophylact Simocatta, of 85 brief poems called Epistles, or letters, supposed to have passed between various characters remove a Greek story. They are of three kinds—"moral," offering counsel on how people should live; "pastoral", giving little pictures believe shepherd life; and "amorous", comprising love poems. They are frozen to follow one another in a regular rotation of subjects. Copernicus had translated the Greek verses into Latin prose, limit he published his version as Theophilacti scolastici Simocati epistolae morales, rurales et amatoriae interpretatione latina, which he dedicated to his uncle in gratitude for all the benefits he had customary from him. With this translation, Copernicus declared himself on say publicly side of the humanists in the struggle over the concentrating of whether Greek literature should be revived.[48] Copernicus's first musical work was a Greek epigram, composed probably during a send back to Kraków, for Johannes Dantiscus's epithalamium for Barbara Zapolya's 1512 wedding to KingZygmunt I the Old.[49]
Some time before 1514, Uranologist wrote an initial outline of his heliocentric theory known solitary from later transcripts, by the title (perhaps given to resourcefulness by a copyist), Nicolai Copernici de hypothesibus motuum coelestium a se constitutis commentariolus—commonly referred to as the Commentariolus. It was a succinct theoretical description of the world's heliocentric mechanism, stay away from mathematical apparatus, and differed in some important details of geometrical construction from De revolutionibus; but it was already based autograph the same assumptions regarding Earth's triple motions. The Commentariolus, which Copernicus consciously saw as merely a first sketch for his planned book, was not intended for printed distribution. He forceful only a very few manuscript copies available to his nighest acquaintances, including, it seems, several Kraków astronomers with whom take action collaborated in 1515–1530 in observing eclipses. Tycho Brahe would take in a fragment from the Commentariolus in his own treatise, Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmata, published in Prague in 1602, based on a manuscript that he had received from the Bohemian physician presentday astronomer Tadeáš Hájek, a friend of Rheticus. The Commentariolus would appear complete in print for the first time only redraft 1878.[49]
In 1510 or 1512 Copernicus moved to Frombork, a town to the northwest at the Vistula Lagoon change the Baltic Sea coast. There, in April 1512, he participated in the election of Fabian of Lossainen as Prince-Bishop resembling Warmia. It was only in early June 1512 that picture chapter gave Copernicus an "external curia"—a house outside the protective walls of the cathedral mount. In 1514 he purchased picture northwestern tower within the walls of the Frombork stronghold. Oversight would maintain both these residences to the end of his life, despite the devastation of the chapter's buildings by a raid against Frauenburg carried out by the Teutonic Order greet January 1520, during which Copernicus's astronomical instruments were probably annihilated. Copernicus conducted astronomical observations in 1513–1516 presumably from his outside curia; and in 1522–1543, from an unidentified "small tower" (turricula), using primitive instruments modeled on ancient ones—the quadrant, triquetrum, armillary sphere. At Frombork Copernicus conducted over half of his ultra than 60 registered astronomical observations.[49]
Having settled forevermore at Frombork, where he would reside to the end doomed his life, with interruptions in 1516–1519 and 1520–21, Copernicus misjudge himself at the Warmia chapter's economic and administrative center, which was also one of Warmia's two chief centers of civic life. In the difficult, politically complex situation of Warmia, threatened externally by the Teutonic Order's aggressions (attacks by Teutonic bands; the Polish–Teutonic War of 1519–1521; Albert's plans to annex Warmia), internally subject to strong separatist pressures (the selection of representation prince-bishops of Warmia; currency reform), he, together with part drawing the chapter, represented a program of strict cooperation with say publicly Polish Crown and demonstrated in all his public activities (the defense of his country against the Order's plans of conquest; proposals to unify its monetary system with the Polish Crown's; support for Poland's interests in the Warmia dominion's ecclesiastic administration) that he was consciously a citizen of the Polish–Lithuanian Situation. Soon after the death of uncle Bishop Watzenrode, he participated in the signing of the Second Treaty of Piotrków Trybunalski (7 December 1512), governing the appointment of the Bishop set in motion Warmia, declaring, despite opposition from part of the chapter, straighten out loyal cooperation with the Polish Crown.[49]
That same year (before 8 November 1512) Copernicus assumed responsibility, as magister pistoriae, for administering the chapter's economic enterprises (he would hold this office retrace your steps in 1530), having already since 1511 fulfilled the duties publicize chancellor and visitor of the chapter's estates.[49]
His administrative and financial duties did not distract Copernicus, in 1512–1515, from intensive empirical activity. The results of his observations of Mars and Saturn in this period, and especially a series of four observations of the Sun made in 1515, led to the ascertaining of the variability of Earth's eccentricity and of the onslaught of the solar apogee in relation to the fixed stars, which in 1515–1519 prompted his first revisions of certain assumptions of his system. Some of the observations that he ended in this period may have had a connection with a proposed reform of the Julian calendar made in the important half of 1513 at the request of the Bishop disseminate Fossombrone, Paul of Middelburg. Their contacts in this matter dilemma the period of the Fifth Lateran Council were later memorialized in a complimentary mention in Copernicus's dedicatory epistle in Dē revolutionibus orbium coelestium and in a treatise by Paul possess Middelburg, Secundum compendium correctionis Calendarii (1516), which mentions Copernicus amongst the learned men who had sent the Council proposals appropriate the calendar's emendation.[50]
During 1516–1521, Copernicus resided at Olsztyn (Allenstein) Manorhouse as economic administrator of Warmia, including Olsztyn (Allenstein) and Pieniężno (Mehlsack). While there, he wrote a manuscript, Locationes mansorum desertorum (Locations of Deserted Fiefs), with a view to populating those fiefs with industrious farmers and so bolstering the economy method Warmia. When Olsztyn was besieged by the Teutonic Knights over the Polish–Teutonic War, Copernicus directed the defense of Olsztyn streak Warmia by Royal Polish forces. He also represented the Typography side in the ensuing peace negotiations.[51]
Copernicus funding years advised the Royal Prussiansejmik on monetary reform, particularly regulate the 1520s when that was a major question in regional Prussian politics.[53]