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Copernicus was born in 1473 in the city of Torun in Royal Prussia, Poland. His father Nikolas, a citizen of Krakow (at that time the capital of Poland), moved there in 1460 and became a respected citizen of Torun as well, once the war with Teutonic Knights was over. He was ten years of age when his father, a wealthy businessman and copper trader, died. Little is known of his mother, Barbara Watzenrode, but she appears to have predeceased her husband. His maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode, a church canon and later the Prince-Bishop governor of Warmia, raised him and his three other siblings after the death of Copernicus' father. His brother Andrew became canon in Frombork. A sister, Barbara, became a Benedictine nun and the other sister, Katharina, married a businessman and city councillor, Barthel Gertner.
Monument to Copernicus in Warsaw, by Bertel Thorvaldsen
In 1491 Copernicus entered the University of Krakow, and here he encountered astronomy for the first time, thanks to his teacher Albert Brudzewski. This science soon fascinated him, as his books (stolen by Swedes during The Deluge, and now in Uppsala's library) show. After four years and a brief stay in Torun, he moved to Italy, where he studied law and medicine at the universities of Bologna and Padua. His uncle financed his education and wished for him to become a bishop as well. However, while studying canon and civil law at Ferrara, he met his teacher Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara, a famous astronomer. He followed his lessons and became a disciple and assistant.
The first observation Copernicus made in 1497 together with Domenico Novara, are recorded in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
In 1497 his uncle was ordained the bishop of Warmia and Copernicus was named a canon in the Frombork cathedral, but he waited in Italy for the great Jubilee of 1500, so he went to Rome, where he could observe a lunar eclipse and where he gave some lessons of astronomy or math (unfortunately nothing of this remains to us).
He would have then visited Frombork only in 1501. As soon as he reached this town, he asked and obtained permission to return to Italy to complete his studies in Padua (with Guarico and Fracastoro) and in Ferrara (with Bianchini), where in 1503 received his doctoral degree in canon law. It has been supposed that it was in Padua that he gained access to those passages of Cicero and Plato about the opinion of Ancients on the movement of the Earth, having the first intuition of his theory. His collection of observations and ideas on the theory started in 1504.
Having left Italy at the end of his studies, he came to live and work in Frombork. Some time before his return to Warmia, he had received a position at the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross in Wroclaw, Silesia, which he held for many years until he resigned a few years prior to his death, when he progressively became ill. Throughout his lifetime he made astronomical observations and calculations, but always in his spare time and never as a profession.
Copernicus worked for years with Prussian diet on monetary reform and published some studies about the value of money; as a governor of Warmia, he administered taxes and dealt out justice. It was at this time that Copernicus came up with one of the earliest iterations of the theory now known as Gresham's Law. During these years he also travelled extensively on government business and as a diplomat, on the behalf of the Prince-Bishop of Warmia. "Astronomer Copernicus: Conversation with God", painted by Jan Matejko In 1514 he made his "Commentariolus" - a short, handwritten text describing his ideas about the heliocentric hypothesis - available to his friends. From there he continued gathering evidence for a more detailed work.
During the war between Teutonic Order and Kingdom of Poland ( 1519- 1524) Copernicus successfully defended Olsztyn on the head of royal troops besiged by the troops of Albert of Brandenburg.
In 1533 Copernicus delivered a series of lectures in Rome outlining his theory and received no reprimand from the Church. In 1536 his work was already in a definitive form, and some rumours about his theory had reached the scientists of all Europe. From many parts of the continent, Copernicus received invitations to publish it, but he felt quite apprehensive of persecution for his revolutionary work by the establishment of the time. The cardinal Nicola Schonberg of Capua wrote him for a copy of his manuscript, and this made Copernicus, who saw in this a certain nervousness of the Church, even more frightened of eventual reactions.
Copernicus was still completing his work (even if he was not convinced to publish it), when in 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a great mathematician at Wittenberg, directly arrived in Frombork. Philipp Melanchthon had arranged with several astronomers for Rheticus to visit and study with them. Rheticus became a disciple of Copernicus' and stayed with him for two years, in which he wrote a book, Narratio prima, in which he included the essence of the theory.
In 1542, in the name of Copernicus, Rheticus published a treatise on trigonometry (later included in the second book of De revolutionibus). Under the strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen that the first general reception of his work had not been favorable, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend Tiedemann Giese , (the bishop of Chelmno Land), to be delivered to Rheticus for printing at Nuremberg.
Legend says that the first printed copy of De revolutionibus was put in Copernicus's hands the same day of his death, so that he could say goodbye to his opus vitae. He - allegedly - awoke from his stroke induced coma, looked at his book, and died peacefully.
Copernicus was buried in the Frombork Cathedral. However, a group of archaeologists searching for the body of Copernicus in 2004 failed to find the corpse of the astronomer. They found, however, several interesting graves from various time periods. The search for the body of Copernicus will continue in 2005.
See also discussion about Copernicus' nationality.
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