Nicolaus Copernicus   1473 - 1543

Click on picture to see portraits of Copernicus.

Galileo, Kepler and Newton are names that command respect. They were great men whose contribution to science and human knowledge cannot adequately be described even by those competent to attempt it.

But I believe these men owe some part of their greatness to Copernicus and that without him pointing the way they could not have achieved all they did.

Books describe Copernicus him as a "Polish Astonomer" but what did he do? To start he went to four different universities in three different countries for many years studying cannon law, maths and medicine (and astrology needed for medicine). He did some practical astronomy. I understand he was at Cracow University at age 19 in 1492, the year Columbus discovered the Americas and he was probably there earlier a year or two before that.

He had to come home in 1497 to be inducted into the Church as a Cannon (his Uncle was a Prince-Bishop of Warmia and slipped Nick into the system) and that might have lost Nick a year but he had done 10 or 12 years at university and was 30 years old when he finally came home in 1503 and as we will see, was a very busy boy afterwards. I think Nick must have learned a lot at uni, either in class or out and had pretty much come to form all his views while there. He did not make any huge impact while he was there (neither did Issac Newton stand out at uni). Maybe he was just being careful about espousing ideas that contradicted 1200 yrs of scientific establishment and the bible in one swipe. Who knows, you could be burnt at the stake in those days.

After university he became his Uncle's principle secretary. He spent 9 years in this job getting a reputation as a good adminstrator but was in a influential position through nepotism. Certainly there is no evidence that he was trying to push atronomy frontiers. In fact, six years after going to work for his uncle, he translated a collection of ribald letters by a Byzantine poet from Greek to Polish, the first translation of any book from Greek to Polish. Eventually his uncle died in 1512 and Nick was made to go and be a cannon (priest?) fair dinkum in small town. During this time he seriously practiced medicine within the local community. Practicing medicine was probably his way of maintaining his standing.

After 4 years, in 1516, he was promoted to administer some outlying church estates but the clouds of war were on the horizon and at such times good men rise rapidly. By 1519 he was back in his old job as Secretary Chancellor for Warmia and in 1520 Prussia invaded Poland across Warmia. Nick's city came under siege and senior officials fled the city. The story told is that Copernicus was appointed as Governer-in-Charge and I can believe it ..he probably just stepped up and started giving orders.

Anyway, wether Nick was in charge or not, he did stay to do his bit and the city held out .. the Prussians gave up the siege and eventually pulled out leaving Warmia devastated. Nick wrote a memorandum on the state of affairs that went up to the Polish King and became very concerned with reconstruction economics, helping farmers to restock, prevent inflation and maintain prices and standards for staple commodities (good grief!). Oh, and the church promoted him too!

Time for Nick to publish for the second time. It is 1923, Nick is 50 years old and time is running out to become a legendary Polish Astonomer. The last book was on a Byzantine poet remember, so now it's time to crank out a few thousand words to provide inspiration for Kepler and Galileo et al right. Wrong! He wrote on currency reforms and more properly controlled national currency which puts him 30 years ahead of a guy called Gresham who economists regard as the big man of the day in that area. Copernicus also wrote proposals to control the economy by regulating the supply of money a concept which has carried through to our modern world.

Keep remembering this is a man whose name appears in Senior High School and 1st Year College physics texts as a famous Polish Astronomer .. spoken on the same breath as Galilao considered by many to be the greatest man in the last 1800 years give or take a century. All this and he has not stepped up to bat yet!

Ok. Now the setting for Nick's big contribution. About 1200 years earlier Greece was the center of science and learning, and Plato was the great thinker of his day. Plato said the Sun rotated around a stationary earth, in effect that the earth was the center of the universe, and the Church agreed.

Over time many complex models were built, notably one by Ptolomy, showing the sun, planets and stars all rotating around a stationary earth in it's center that satisfied, more or less, the motions of the sun, planets and stars as seen from earth. As astonomy improved increasingly complex models were built to account for the motions of planets as seen from earth.

So 1200 years after Plato they were still saying the earth was stationary at the center of the universe and the sun and everything else rotated around it.

Enter Copernicus. He said the earth was moving and spinning around the Sun along with the other planets. In effect that the Sun was at the center of things and Earth was just one of many planets rotating around it. He built a model with the Sun at its center which was much simpler and reproduced the motion of other planets as seen from earth far more accurately than the unbelievably complex models that were being built to support the Earth centered theory of Plato and Ptolomy.

But what Copernicus said was contentious, and his theories were published only as he was dying, which was a fairly safe way to rock the boat. There was not much support for his position for 100 years or so afterwards. (I can't imagine there would be if you think about Bruno Giordano who, 57 years after the death of Copernicus, was, burnt alive at the stake naked with a nail driven through his tonque ...it was Giordano's published work which was considered to warrent the death sentence).

Anyway Galileo, in a letter to Kepler, described himself as a "Copernicist" and did 1 year in prison and 4 years under house arrest for saying so publicly ..so we know who Galileo listened to. Kepler himself is most famous for producing a set of motion equation that describe the paths of the planets (like earth) around the sun while Newton, most famous for his force analysis work culminating in his Universal Law (of gravitation), was only finally happy when he could re-derive Kepler's motion equations independently from his own Universal Law. Bottom line is Galileo carried the banner forward taking flack then Kepler and Newton made the mathamatical models which validated the line taken by Copernicus and convincing the doubters.

So you tell me ..if Copernicus had not changed the whole direction of 1500 years of science and pointed out the correct direction would Galileo, Kepler and Newton have taken us where they did. I doubt it. Sure we would have got there eventually but not in the same time frame that allowed us to put a man on the moon in 1964. The philosopher Goethe puts it in a non-scientific perspective by saying that Copernicus " freed the human spirit of the shackles that were binding it".

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."  Sir Isaac Newton, 1675