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Nicolaus Copernicus Making the Earth a Planet XFORD S PORTRAITS IN CIENCE Owen Gingerich General Editor Nicolaus Copernicus Making the Earth a Planet Owen Gingerich and James MacLachlan Oxford University Press New York • Oxford We fondly dedicate this book to our oldest grandchildren, Philip Gingerich and Erin MacLachlan. Oxford University Press,Inc.,publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research,scholarship,and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press,Inc. Published by Oxford University Press,Inc. 198 Madison Avenue,New York,New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Design:Design Oasis Layout:Greg Wozney Picture research:Ted Szczepanski Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gingerich,Owen. Nicolaus Copernicus :making the Earth a planet / Owen Gingerich and James MacLachlan. p.cm.—(Oxford portraits in science) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-516173-4 1. Copernicus,Nicolaus,1473-1543—Juvenile literature.2. Astronomers—Poland—Biography—Juvenile literature. I.MacLachlan, James H.II.Title.III.Series. QB36.C8G46 2004 520'.92—dc22 2004020959 Printing number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper On the cover:The 16th-century portrait in the background hangs in the town hall of Torun´, Poland.Both portraits were based on a now-lost self-portrait. Frontispiece:Copernicus holds a traditional armillary sphere,or model of the sky girdled by the zodiac,in this commemorative statue in Torun´,Poland,the city where he was born. Contents Chapter 1.Expanding the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Chapter 2.School Days in Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Chapter 3.At the University in Cracow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Sidebar:Astronomy before Copernicus . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 Chapter 4.A Scholar in Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Sidebar: Ptolemy’s Equant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Sidebar:The Myth of Epicycles-on-Epicycles . . . . . . . . . .46 Chapter 5.The Breakthrough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Chapter 6.An Earth-Shaking Development . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Sidebar: Parallax:Using Geometry to Find Distance . . . .70 Chapter 7.The Busy Canon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Sidebar: Copernicus’s Instruments and Observatory . . .82 Chapter 8.On the Revolutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97 Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 Further Reading and Websites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122 This page intentionally left blank XFORD S PORTRAITS IN CIENCE Charles Babbage Alexander Graham Bell Nicolaus Copernicus Francis Crick & James Watson Marie Curie Charles Darwin Thomas Edison Albert Einstein Michael Faraday Enrico Fermi Sigmund Freud Galileo Galilei William Harvey Joseph Henry Edward Jenner Johannes Kepler Othniel Charles Marsh & Edward Drinker Cope Margaret Mead Gregor Mendel Isaac Newton Louis Pasteur Linus Pauling Ivan Pavlov Ernest Rutherford CHAPTER 1 Expanding the World The university hall was humming with conversations.At the beginning of the fall term in 1493, students at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow were renewing acquain- tances after the summer break.Waiting for university offi- cials to arrive,the students gradually gathered into buzzing clusters. Soon, one large group formed around a student from Vienna,standing on a chair waving a pamphlet. The pamphlet contained a report from Christopher Columbus,a sea captain who had sailed westward across the Atlantic Ocean.He claimed that he had arrived at islands off the coast of Asia after sailing for 33 days from the Canary Islands near Africa. Could it possibly be true? He had brought back with him natives of those islands, who looked very different from Africans. He called them Indians.He also brought back gold and spices and forecast a rich trade with China for Spain.But the natives did not appear to be Asians.Was it possible that some new land blocked the westward route to the fabled East? Andreas and Nicolaus Copernicus, from northern Poland,joined the students.They were returning for their third year at the university. More questions assaulted the 8 This world map,printed in Germany in 1482,reveals European knowledge of the world 10 years prior to Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas.The mapmakers depicted the world using the positions of places tabulated by Claudius Ptolemy,the second-century astronomer and geographer.