5303 AM · 1543 CE · world history
Copernicus: the Earth Moves Around the Sun
In the year of his death a canon from Frombork publishes the book that moved the Earth from the centre.
Nicolaus Copernicus calculated and rechecked for decades before agreeing to print. On the Revolutions appeared as he lay dying. His system was no simpler than Ptolemy's and at first no more accurate, but it explained the planets' loops naturally. The Earth became one planet among others.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the first edition of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Nuremberg, 1543)
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — the path of the idea from Copernicus through Kepler and Galileo to Newton
Basis: documents and evidence.