Copernicus' lifeMany thought he was crazy. Others thought he was a genius. Some even thought he was the devil. This man's name was Nicolaus Copernicus. This man understood important things about our world, our solar system, and our universe. Nicolas Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland, on February 19, 1473. He was the youngest of four children. When Nicolaus was a young boy, just 10 years old, his father died. He and his brothers and sisters was brought up by his uncle, a prince-bishop（中世纪采邑之主教）, so he had the advantage of being able to get a first-class education. in 1491, Nicolaus went to the University of Krakow. The university was one of the greatest in Europe at the time. Nicolaus later said that his studies at that university changed his life. At the university, he studied Latin, math, astronomy, geography, and philosophy. Copernicus placed the sun in the center of the system and made the earth a planet traveling around the sun. Today it is hard to imagine our solar system any other way, but in his time Copernicus's idea was earthshaking. It occurred to Copernicus as early as 1507, that tables of planetary positions could be calculated more easily if it were assumed that the sun, rather than the earth, were the center of the universe. This would mean that the earth itself, along with the other planets, would have to be considered as moving through space and revolving about the sun. This was not a new idea. Among the ancients, Aristarchus(阿里斯塔耳科斯) had suggested the notion, and not many years before the time of Copernicus, Nicholas of Cusa ( 尼 哥 拉 ) had made a similar suggestion. Copernicus was to do more than suggest, however. Beginning in 1512, he set...
