Nicolaus Copernicus - Krakow, Poland
N 50° 03.683 E 019° 55.967
34U E 423613 N 5546001
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe.
Waymark Code: WMQ0XC
Location: Małopolskie, Poland
Date Posted: 11/25/2015
Views: 6
The publication of this model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543 is considered a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.
Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been a part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. He was a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in canon law and also practiced as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist.
In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money – a key concept in economics – and in 1519 he formulated a version of what later became known as Gresham's law.
In the winter semester of 1491–92 Copernicus, as "Nicolaus Nicolai de Thuronia", matriculated together with his brother Andrew at the University of Kraków (now Jagiellonian University). Copernicus began his studies in the Department of Arts (from the fall of 1491, presumably until the summer or fall of 1495) in the heyday of the Kraków astronomical-mathematical school, acquiring the foundations for his subsequent mathematical achievements.
Copernicus' four years at Kraków played an important role in the development of his critical faculties and initiated his analysis of the logical contradictions in the two most popular systems of astronomy—Aristotle's theory of homocentric spheres, and Ptolemy's mechanism of eccentrics and epicycles—the surmounting and discarding of which constituted the first step toward the creation of Copernicus' own doctrine of the structure of the universe.
The statue, designed by sculptor Cyprian Godebski in 1899, was completed in 1900. It originally stood in the courtyard of the Jagiellonian University's Collegium Maius. In 1953 it was moved to Kraków's Planty Park, before the Collegium Witkowski.
The monument is cast in bronze and shows Nicolaus Copernicus standing on a granite pedestal, on which are mounted four marble plaques with inscriptions in Latin dedicated to the memory of the great astronomer. Copernicus is holding an astrolabe.
(Text taken from Wikipedia)
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