1473: Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, Poland, of German parents, leading both countries to claim him as their own.

The astronomer was not so eagerly embraced by the Catholic Church, however, after becoming the most prominent advocate of the heliocentric theory that placed Earth in orbit around a stationary sun, an idea that stood in direct opposition to both conventional wisdom and Catholic dogma.

The heliocentric theory had existed for centuries but in largely fragmented form, buried by time and religious repression. In what is now known as the Copernican system, Copernicus outlined seven basic theoretical principles and presented them in his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, or in English, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres:

There is no one center of all the celestial spheres [orbits].

The Earth's center is not the center of the universe.

The center of the universe is near the sun.

The distance of the Earth to the sun is imperceptible compared with the distance to the stars.

The rotation of the Earth accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars.

The apparent annual cycle of movements of the sun is caused by the Earth revolving around the sun.

The apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the motion of the Earth, from which one observes.

Unsurprisingly, Rome banned the book.

Copernican theory not only obliterated the universe as understood by Ptolemy and the ancients, it had a profound effect on other astronomers of the scientific age, including Galileo and Johannes Kepler. It is thus considered a defining moment in the history of science.

Source: Wikipedia

This article first appeared on Wired.com Feb. 19, 2007.

Photo: Swedish and Polish researchers project a forensic facial reconstruction made from the skull of Copernicus. The researchers matched mitochondrial DNA found in hair retrieved from a book that belonged to the astronomer with a skeleton in the cathedral in Frombork, Poland, where Copernicus was buried. The 2008 reconstruction resembles existing portraits of Copernicus.

Czarek Sokolowski/AP