12 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



his reserve, he showed great brilliance and wit in his con- 

 versation. He always had a great affection for animals.^ 



NICOLAUS COPERNICUS 



1473-1543 



Copernicus was born at Thorn on the Vistula, and studied 

 medicine, mathematics, and astronomy at Cracow. His 

 name was usually written by himself as 'Coppernic'; but in 

 his work De Revolutionibus we find 'Kopernikus.' He lost 

 his parents at an early age and was sent by his maternal uncle, 

 later Bishop of Ermland, to monastic life. He had to travel 

 a great deal, which took him to Vienna and Rome, and he 

 continued his studies very extensively at various Italian Uni- 

 versities. At about the age of 27, he gave public lectures 

 on astronomy in Rome, but then studied canonical law and 

 finally became canon of Frauenburg near his home. This 

 gave him the possibility of devoting his life to undisturbed 

 study for many years, particularly at first, and then again as 

 an old man. But he also at times played the practical part 

 of bailiff to the extensive lands of the cathedral, at the Castle 

 of Allenstein, and performed this function during difficult 

 periods of war time with care and firmness. He was for a 

 considerable time the representative of the Cathedral Chap- 

 ter at the Prussian Landtag, acted as an expert when a new 



^ Leonardo's life, art, and personality, have been described in The 

 Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, by E. MacCurdy (1928), who has also edited 

 his note books, and published an abridged edition of them. The reader 

 may also be referred to Merezhkovsky's famous novel The Forerunner, 

 which is a study of Leonardo's personality. In the German language, 

 we have the work of Woldemar von Seidlitz (2 vols. Berlin, 1909). A 

 detailed appreciation of Leonardo as a scientist who built up his ideas very 

 decidedly upon experience and observation, is to be found in E. von 

 Lippmann's Abhandlungen und Vortrdge, vol. I, pp. 346-375 (Leipzig, 

 1906). See also Leonardo ah Techniker und Erfinder, 2nd ed., by F. M. 

 Feldhaus, 1922. 



