Nicolaus Copernicus Born-19 Feb 1473 Died-24 May 1543

Nicolaus Copernicus is Born

Feb 19, 1473

Born in the city of Thorn in the province of Royal Prussia

Copernicus Publishes his Book "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium"

1543

For 5 millennia the geocentric model of the Earth as the center of the universe had been accepted by all but a few astronomers. Copernicus's heliocentric model that replaced it involved not only the radical displacement of the earth to an orbit around the sun, but its sharing a placement with the other planets implied a universe of heavenly components made from the same changeable substances as the Earth.

Nicolaus Copernicus Dies

May 24, 1543

Copernicus died at the age of 70. His book sparked what is now known as the Scientific Revolution. By questioning the previous teachings of Aristotle, Copernicus started a snowball effect that enabled the likes of Johannes Kepler and Galileo to only further prove his earlier theory's. Sir Isaac Newton himself used Copernicus's theory's on motion to write "Principia" which formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that all scientists still use today