Copernicus's Birthday
Next: February 19, 2027
The day the Sun took centre stage.
The story
Where it comes from
Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Toruń, in what is now Poland, on 19 February 1473, and this Story marks his birthday. The astronomer proposed that the Earth is a planet that turns daily on its own axis and travels around the Sun each year, rather than sitting still at the centre of everything. He probably hit on the idea between 1508 and 1514 and set it out in a short manuscript, but his full account, De revolutionibus, was published only in 1543, the year he died. Galileo, Kepler and Newton all built on it.
How it's celebrated
There is no formal observance, but his birthday is a good day to step outside at sunrise or sunset and remember that it is the Earth, not the Sun, that is doing the moving. Teachers can use a lamp and a ball to show day, night and the turning year, and stargazers can look for the planets that share the Earth's journey around the Sun.
Did you know
- On 19 February 2010, his birthday, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry announced that element 112 would be named copernicium in his honour.
- The discoverers first wanted the symbol Cp, but it had once been used for another element, so copernicium became Cn.
- His idea of bodies circling a common centre was later echoed on the tiniest scale in the Bohr model of the atom, with electrons orbiting a nucleus.
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