Hello, my name is John McFarland and I would like to tell you about one of my heroes, Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus lived during the middle Ages when people were very superstitious and believed in witches, magic and predestination. Most people could not read or write and everyone believed that the earth was the center of the universe, that the earth didn’t move at all and that the moon, the planets, the sun and even the stars revolved around the earth. This is the world in which Copernicus lived, which makes it even more remarkable that in 1543 he published the book “On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres”. In it, Copernicus announced to the world that the earth was not the center of the universe; it was simply a planet orbiting the sun. This simple but bold idea changed astronomy forever and it altered man’s view of his place in the universe.

Copernicus was a remarkable man, he was both a Roman Catholic canon, that’s a church lawyer, and a medical doctor. Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Poland on Feb 19, 1477. His father, a successful businessman and civic leader died when he was young, and he was raised by his uncle, a Roman Catholic Bishop. Nicolaus received an excellent education and after several years at the University of Cracow his uncle sent him to study canon law in Italy. Being a canon was an excellent church job with good financial security.

Copernicus spent 8 years studying in Italy. He received a doctorate in Canon Law and also studied medicine at Padua. When Copernicus returned to Poland he worked for his uncle, the bishop, as his assistant and personal physician. In 1510 Copernicus began his lifelong job as a Roman Catholic canon in one of Poland’s northern most towns, Frombork. As a canon, Copernicus acted not only as a church lawyer but also as an administrator. He had a long and distinguished career as a church canon and held a number of positions during his life. For instance, during the war been Poland and the Teutonic Knights, Copernicus was in charge of the defense of Allenstein castle; the castle came under attack but never fell. After the war, he was put in charge of rebuilding the castle. Such duties were typical for a church canon. And we must not forget that Copernicus was also a medical doctor and practiced medicine this entire life.

Oh, I almost forgot, Copernicus had an interesting hobby, astronomy and it was his lifelong passion. Today we would call Copernicus a serious amateur astronomer. So at the same time he was studying to become a church canon and a medical doctor in Italy he was also studying mathematics and astronomy. As a canon in Frombork, Copernicus lived in one of the towers of the fortress wall so he would have a better view of the heavens and we shouldn’t forget that Copernicus never looked through a telescope – they weren’t invented until 65 years after his death.

So what did Nicolaus Copernicus do that was so great? Well, he solved a puzzle that was over a thousand years old. A puzzle that thinkers since before the Greeks could not solve. If we plot the path of any of the planets night after night, they generally move in one direction, but occasionally they move backwards for awhile and then forward again. Today we call this backward motion, retrograde. The Greeks called this curious pattern epicycles because the planets appeared to make a circle in the sky. Until Copernicus, no one could explain why they moved backwards. In reality, the planets don’t actually move backwards, it just looks that way. All the planets do this, but let’s use Mars as an example. Everyone knows the earth orbits the sun in one year and most people know that Mars orbits the sun in two years, so the earth goes around the sun twice as fast as Mars. Every time the earth catches up and then passes Mars it looks like Mars is moving backwards. That’s because the earth is moving faster: it’s an optical illusion and Copernicus was the first person to figure this out.

Of course, this can only be true if the earth and the other planets are orbiting the sun, and that was Copernicus’ great idea. Copernicus explained that the sun was the center of the universe and all the planets, including the earth, orbit the sun. He also explained that the earth was spinning on its axis and that’s why we have day and night.

These ideas weren’t easy for people to accept, especially after believing for over 1,000 years that the earth didn’t move at all. Copernicus first proposed his ideas in a hand written paper he showed to his friends in 1514, but he knew that he would need lots of examples, explanations, and mathematical proofs for his ideas to be accepted. That’s why he spent another 29 years working to make his book as complete and understandable as possible. The book was finally published in 1543 when Copernicus was 70 years old and in very poor health. In fact, he only saw a copy of the completed book on his death bed.

At the time, Copernicus’ ideas were quite revolutionary. Both the Catholic and Protestant churches initially opposed the sun centered model, but there were scholars and clerics in both camps that recognized the unique simplicity of the Copernican model. The Protestants warmed to the idea first, but the Catholic Church also accepted the sun centered universe, but not before trying to suppress the truth. The most famous example of this suppression was the trial of Galileo, but within 100 years of Copernicus’ death, the sun centered model of the solar system was accepted by nearly everyone.

Science, more than anything else, is about man’s curiosity, and that’s why Copernicus is my hero. As a young man he was curious about the unusual backward motion of the planets and had a unique idea to explain what was happening. He spent his entire life working to prove his idea was correct, not only for himself, but also for the rest of the world. Thank you, Nicolaus Copernicus!