Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19th in Thorn, Poland. His family consisted of merchants and government officials. After studying liberal arts at the University of Krakow he went to Italy to study medicine and law in 1496. His home in Italy was that of mathematics professor Domenico Maria de Novara. He began to study canon law at the University of Bologna. On March 9th 1497 the two men observe the eclipse by the moon caused by the star Aldebaran. In 1500, Copernicus lectured on astronomy in Rome. One year later, he was allowed to study additionally medicine at Badua. It was not unusual at the time to study a subject at one university and then to receive a degree from another - often less expensive - institution. In 1503 he received a doctored in canon law from Ferara, and then returned to Poland without completing his medical studies, to start his administrative duties. He assisted in the administration of the church and in the conflict against German Knights. He lived at his uncle's palace in Lidzbark Warminski from 1503 to 1510. He then published his first book, a Latin translation of letters on morals by a seventh century writer Theophylactus of Simocatta from Byzzans. Some time between 1570 and 1515 he completed a short astronomical study, which was called De Hypothesibus Motuum Coulestium a se Constitutis Commentariolus (known as the Commentariolus), which was printed only in the 19th century. In this work he wrote down the principles of his heliocentric astronomy. After moving to Frauenburg in 1512, Copernicus took part in the Fifth Lateran Council's commision on calendar reform; wrote a study on money; and began his major work, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), which was finished by 1530 but published by a Lutheran printer in Nuremberg, Germany, just before his death on May 24, 1543.   The Copernican system and its influence The major premises of Copernicus's theory are that the earth rotates daily on its axis and revolves yearly around the sun. He argued that the planets also circle around the sun. The Copernican theory retained many features of the cosmology it replaced, including the solid, planet-bearing spheres, and the outermost spheres being the fixed stars. On the other hand, Copernicus's heliocentric theories of planetary motion had the advantage of accounting for the apparent daily and yearly motion of the sun and stars, and it neatly explained the apparent backward motion of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and why Mercury and Venus never move more than a certain distance from the Sun. Further, Copernicus categorized planets according to their periods of rotation. Different to Ptolemy, Copernicus observed that the greater the radius of a planet's orbit, the longer it takes to rotate around the sun. However, the idea that the earth was actually moving was difficult to accept by most people in the 16th century, therefore only parts of his theory were accepted, the radical ideas were ignored or rejected. Ten astronomers followed Copernicus between 1543 and 1600. The most famous ones were Galileo and the German Johannes Kepler. They often differed in their reasons for supporting the ideas and concepts of Copernicus. In 1633, Galileo was sentenced in a trial by the Catholic Church, as a consequence Copernicus's ideas were suppressed, however secretly, several Jesuit philosophers followed his Ideas. By the late 17th century, most major thinkers in Britain, France, the Netherlands and Denmark were Copernicans.

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