Copernicus and His Gifts to Science

On February 19, 1473 Nicolaus Copernicus was born, destined to be one of the most influential men in scientific history. Throughout his years, Copernicus has contributed many thoughts to science. The Autograph De Revolutionibus, preserved in the Jagiellonian Library, is a result of work of the great scholar. In May 1514 Copernicus had written and tastefully distributed in text his Commentariolus, the first outline of those wiles eventually substantiated in De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of …

…the center of the cosmos. Instead, the Earth would be considered as one celestial body among many, it became subject to mathematical portrayal. The reception of De Revolutionibus was mixed. The heliocentric hypothesis was rejected out of hand by practically every one, but the book was the most refined cosmological dissertation since the Almagest, and for this it was widely praised. Its mathematical formations were easily transferred into geocentric ones, and many astronomers used them.