Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19th, 1473 in Thorn, Poland, but he lived and died in Frauenburg, Poland. The date of his death was May 24th, 1543. He lived for 70 years. He was the son of a prosperous merchant but was raised by a maternal uncle due to the death of his father. .
His uncle then enabled him to enter the University of Krakow,which was famous at the time for its mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy curriculum.
In 1500, Copernicus visited Rome and stayed there for a year lecturing scholars. Although he studied medicine he also took great interest in Astronomy. While in Rome he observed an eclipse of the Moon which took place on 6 November 1500. Copernicus went back to Italy and began his study on medicine and astronomy. .
At this point in western history, europeans believed that the universe was a closed space bounded by a spherical dome and beyond it there was nothing. Copernicus proved this to be false information. He concluded that there is no center of the universe, the Earth isnt the center of the universe, the center of the universe is near the sun, the rotation of earth accounts for the rotation of the stars, the apparent annual cycle of movements of the sun is caused by the Earth revolving round, and the apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the motion of the Earth from which one observes.
Copernicus died before he could realize what a stir his assumptions made in the western european society. His ideas and theorys have been altered some what but are still used today.