The scientist who realized that not everything revolves around the Earth as it was thought until then, but that the Earth revolves around the Sun - Nicolas Copernicus, was born on February 19, 1473.
His heliocentric theory, which places the Sun at the center of the system, earned Copernicus the title of father of astronomy, and his work About the movement of heavenly bodies ranked among the most important in the history of science.
"Copernicus is in the pantheon of people who contributed to the development of science because he made a turning point in the way science looks at nature.
"He showed that scientific explanations do not have to correspond to what man can perceive with his senses," says science journalist Slobodan Bubnjević for the BBC in Serbian.
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Although Copernicus presented conclusions that were inconsistent with church teaching, he did not find himself targeted by the Vatican until other scientists after him began to develop theories based on his teachings.
The Italian astronomer Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake as a heretic, and Galileo Galilei met his death under house arrest.
Who was Nicolas Copernicus?
This scientist was a Roman Catholic priest from the order of the Jesuits.
He was born in Poland, where he spent almost his entire life.
He was extremely well-educated - he first completed his studies in theology and natural sciences in Krakow, and then his uncle, who was a bishop, sent him to Italy to complete his medical studies.
Bubnjević reminds that Copernicus lived at a time when physics did not yet exist as a science, and there was no knowledge of the theory of gravity, which later explained why smaller bodies - such as the planet Earth - revolve around larger ones, such as the Sun.
There were no differential and integral calculus either, which later played an important role in calculations of the movement of celestial bodies.
In addition, the church had a great influence on the interpretation of nature.
However, Bubnjević points out, it "wasn't a dark age".
"At that time, there was already a network of universities across Europe, a set of ancient knowledge about nature, including astronomy, such as Ptolemy's system of the movement of stars and planets, according to which the Earth is at the center of everything," he explains.
"It seems funny to us today, but only because we learn different things from the earliest days, and back then people relied on their senses - they could see the Sun moving across the sky and they thought the Earth was static".
Bubnjević also reminds that at that time it was not yet thought that static could be an illusion for those who stand and watch.
"When we travel by train, it seems that the world around us is moving, and that we are in a place, with the fact that today we have knowledge that allows us to understand what is happening there," he adds.
"There was no train back then, and people had no reason to suspect, among other things, because it was moving at low speeds."
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Copernican reversal
Living in the small town of Formbrok, in northeastern Poland, Copernicus built an observatory from where he studied the starry sky.
"The Ptolemaic system predicted the movement of the planets based on certain mathematical calculations," explains Bubnjević.
"However, scientists of that time noticed that there were deviations - when they calculated and looked at the sky, the planet would not be exactly where they expected it to be," he adds.
Trying to solve this problem, Copernicus realized that it was necessary to turn the whole system upside down - and put the Sun in the center.
"It was a completely unexpected idea, that's why even today we call something revolutionary a Copernican revolution".
This is how this Polish astronomer laid the foundations of the heliocentric system.
Copernicus published his findings in 1543 - just a few months before his death - in six volumes under the title "On the Motion of the Heavenly Bodies".
However, Bubnjević points out, there was no telescope yet, nor precise measurements, so Copernicus had no confirmation that the solution he proposed was correct.
"He published the work at the persuasion of a friend, near the end of his life," he adds.
Bubnjević explains that "the book is spreading in Europe, but the church does not yet perceive it as a threat and has not paid much attention to it".
It paved the way for scientists like Johann Kepler, who found an important flaw in Copernicus' theory of the motion of the heavenly bodies.
While Copernicus claimed that they move in circular paths, Kepler showed more than a century later that the paths are elliptical in shape.
"With Galileo Galilei, his telescope and the treatise in which he defends the Copernican thesis, the church begins to perceive this theory as a political blow, because it becomes clear that such a turn in perception leads to a different science," says Bubnjević.
"For the first time, man describes the world outside of human senses, and the church cannot allow that, because it means that man can also question those things that are not in the domain of the senses, which the church explained in its own way".
That is why Copernicus can be considered one of the founders of modern science.
In his honor, the chemical element unubimium, which has the 112th place in the periodic table of Medellin, was renamed to copernicium in 2009.
Today it is called after Copernicus space program of the European Union.
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The remains - the mystery of the skull and a single hair
Nicolaus Copernicus died in 1543 in Poland.
The place where he was buried was forgotten over time.
The scientist Galileo Galilei, who followed in the footsteps of Copernicus and did not want to give up learning until his death, was buried in an unmarked grave by order of the red authorities.
For centuries, it was not known what happened to the remains of the Polish astronomer, although it was assumed that he was buried not far from the cathedral in Frombork, which was his home.
Archaeologists were in that cathedral in 2005 found a skull from the XNUMXth century, without the lower jaw.
With further analysis, scientists determined that the deceased was about seventy years old - the same age as Copernicus when he died, so they had even more reason to believe that they had found the astronomer's remains.
Facial reconstruction based on the skull produced a portrait of a man who resembled Copernicus from medieval self-portraits.
Even the scar above the left eye, which this scientist and priest recorded while painting his own face, was reconstructed.
Another detail appeared - the deceased used to break his nose during his life.
However, there was one problem - how to confirm that some bones suspected to be the remains of Copernicus belong to this very scientist and where to find a DNA sample of a man who lived six centuries ago?
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The key appeared three years later - among Copernicus's writings, which were kept in Sweden, in the archives of the University of Uppsala, a hair was found, which was so old that it could correspond to the scientist.
The analysis confirmed the match - it was a hair and the skull of Nicolaus Copernicus.
The remains were ceremoniously returned to the cathedral and buried again 2010 - in honor of the 467th anniversary of the scientist's death.
The grave, on which the Solar System as we learn today thanks to Copernicus is carved, is visited by tourists.
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