Every week is a great week for science!  This Week in Science History is one of the best as I was tempted by way too many anniversaries.  So many cool things happened this week: Arrhenius (02/19/1859) and Boltzmann (02/20/1844) were born (in addition to several Nobel laureates born this week), new ocean life is found at geothermal vents (02/19/1977), John Glenn orbits the Earth (02/20/1962), artificial radioactivity is patented by Ernest Lawrence (02/20/1934), Streptomycin is announced by Dr. Selman Waksman (02/22/1946), Polio vaccinations begin (02/23/1954; profiled last year for this week) and the first rocket reached space (02/24/1949).  

Despite all of these excellent choices (perhaps worthy of future blogs), one anniversary stood out.  On February 19, 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Toruń, Prussia (modern day Poland).  I think the mists of time have obscured the earth shattering (pun intended!) aspects of his work.  But first, a little more about the man. 

Copernicus was born into a wealthy family; his father was a merchant and his mother came from a local, rich merchant family.  He was well educated and attended the University of Krakow (now Jagiellonian University) until around 1495 (he would not be granted a degree).  Copernicus’ studies grounded him in the current thinking on mathematics and astronomy.  And he, like most of the famous polymaths we read about in history, was blessed with the most important faculty to assure his greatness: time.  Being the nephew of a wealthy bishop, he was afforded the time, free from the backbreaking labor of many of his contemporaries who are lost to the passage of time, to be able to formulate his revolutionary ideas.  

Copernicus is known for his heliocentric theories about the universe (although as a polymath, his interests were broad including” math, astronomy, law, medicine, classics, politics, economics, etc.).  He wrote about these topics in his book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543.  The book is considered to be the beginning of modern astronomy and can be thought of as the beginning of the scientific revolution.  Copernicus’ theories were truly revolutionary.  Everyone KNEW the earth was the center of the universe and of the solar system.  It was obvious if one watched the night sky that the sky moved around the stationary earth, right? 

 From this, Copernicus was able to formulate a new set of ideas: 

1. There is no one center of all the celestial circles or spheres.
2. The center of the Earth is not the center of the universe, but only of gravity and of the lunar sphere.
3. All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe.
4. The ratio of the Earth’s distance from the sun to the height of the firmament (outermost celestial sphere containing the stars) is so much smaller than the ratio of the Earth’s radius to its distance from the sun that the distance from the Earth to the sun is imperceptible in comparison with the height of the firmament.
5. Whatever motion appears in the firmament arises not from any motion of the firmament, but from the Earth’s motion. The Earth together with its circumjacent elements performs a complete rotation on its fixed poles in a daily motion, while the firmament and highest heaven abide unchanged.
6. What appear to us as motions of the sun arise not from its motion but from the motion of the Earth and our sphere, with which we revolve about the sun like any other planet. The Earth has, then, more than one motion.
7. The apparent retrograde and direct motion of the planets arises not from their motion but from the Earth’s. The motion of the Earth alone, therefore, suffices to explain so many apparent inequalities in the heavens.

These statements were heresy (literally!) as they went against every KNOWN scientific fact.  Of course, this is always the way of science.  We replace the known with a new known.  The impact of this new known would later be called the Copernican Revolution after the man who started it. 

Copernicus died in Frombork on May 24, 1543.  His grave was lost until 2008 when DNA testing confirmed his remains in Frombork Cathedral. 

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