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Celestial revolutionary Copernicus, the man and his universe

"In the spring of 1500, at the apex of the Renaissance, a papal secretary to the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, wrote that "All the world is in Rome." Though no one knew it at the time, this included a young scholar by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus who would one day change the world. On...

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Main Author: Freely, John (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: London ; New York : New York : I.B. Tauris ; Distributed in the U.S. and Canada exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Subjects:
Copernicus, Nicolaus, > 1473-1543.
Astronomers > Poland > Biography.
Astronomy > History > 16th century.
Summary: "In the spring of 1500, at the apex of the Renaissance, a papal secretary to the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI, wrote that "All the world is in Rome." Though no one knew it at the time, this included a young scholar by the name of Nicolaus Copernicus who would one day change the world. One of the greatest polymaths of his or any age - linguist, lawyer, doctor, diplomat, politician, mathematician, scientist, astronomer, artist, cleric - Copernicus gave the world arguably the most important scientific discovery of the modern era: that earth and the planets revolve around the sun and that the earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. His heliocentric theory and the discoveries that would follow ushered in the age of modern astronomy, often called the Copernican Age, and change the way we look at the universe forever. This brilliant and controversial belief - born of a fusion of the theories of the great scholars of antiquity and the knowledge of the medieval Islamic world - was immortalised in Copernicus' epic "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium", a book whose very first printed copy was placed into his hands at the moment of his death in 1543. Here, for the first time, is a biography of Copernicus that not only describes his theories but the life of the man himself and the epic, thrilling times in which he lived."--From publisher's website.
Physical Description: vii, 279 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (265-273) and index.
ISBN: 9781780763507
1780763506
Author Notes: John Freely was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 26, 1926. During World War II, he enlisted in the U. S. Navy. He studied physics at Iona College and New York University and did thermonuclear research at the Forrestal Research Center, Princeton University. In 1960, he took a post teaching theoretical physics at Robert College, Istanbul. He wrote numerous books during his lifetime including Strolling Through Istanbul written with Hilary Sumner-Boyd, Jem Sultan, Storm on Horseback, The Grand Turk, Aladdin's Lamp, Light from the East, and Before Galileo. He died on April 20, 2017 at the age of 90.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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