Featured Scientist

The following is my own version of a "HALL OF FAME" for scientists.  Monthly selections from my wiki homepage will be archived on my google sites Featured Scientist Webpage.  I began last month (July 2012) with Democritus. What is shown is a picture and short teaser bio with a link(s) to more extensive bios.  Enjoy... 


AUGUST 2012
Who can forget the Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) who proposed that the center of the universe is near the Sun (heliocentric) and not Earth (geocentric) as was believed at the time.  He was born in the town of Torun (Thorn) in Royal Prussia what is know Poland to a well-to-do family.  He studied mathematics, astronomy, medicine, canon law, and economics and spoke several languages.

Interestingly enough, he was not the first person to come up with the Heliocentric model, that belongs to Aristarchus of Samos from the 3rd century B.C., unfortunately for Aristarchus, his model was rejected in favor of the geocentric models proposed byAristotle and Ptolemy.  Copernicus was not satisfied with the geocentric model and made numerous observations using some devices developed by various Islamic astronomers in the 12th and 13th century to publish his own handwritten heliocentric model around 1514.  

sources:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Copernicus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/