NICHOLAS COPERNICUS

Nicholaus Copernicus was a Polish Astronomer who believed in the existence of a Supreme God. He was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who put forward the first mathematical model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the Center of the Universe. The publication of his findings in his book (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543 is considered a major event in the History of Science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.
Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Torun (Thorn) and died in 1543, in the Province of Royal Prussia, a Region that had been part of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. His father was a Merchant from Krakow and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Torun merchant. The father's family name can be traced to a Historic Village in Silesia near Nysa (NeiBe). The Village's name has been spelled Koperniki. In the 14th century, members of the family began moving to various other Silesian cities, to the Polish capital Krakow (1367), and to Torun (1400). The father, Mikotaj the Elder, came from the Krakow line. Nicolaus was named after his father, who appears in records for the first time as a well-to-do merchant who dealt in copper, selling it mostly in Dan-zig (Gdansk).
Nicholaus was the youngest of 4 children. His brother Andreas (Andrew) became an Augustinian Canon at From-Bork (Frau-Enburg). His sister Barbara, named after her mother, became a Benedictine nun and , in her final years, Prioress of a Convent in Chelmno (Kulm); she died after 1517.
His sister Katharina married the businessman and Torun City Councilor Barthel Gertner and left 5 children, whom Copernicus looked after to the end of his life. Copernicus never married or had children.
He was a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in Canon Law and also practiced as a Physician, Classics Scholar, Translator, Governor, Diplomat, and Economist. Like the rest of his family, he was a third order Dominican.
The Dominican Order came into being in the Middle Ages at a time when Religion began to be contemplated in a new way. Men of God were no longer expected to stay behind the Walls of a cloister. Instead, they travelled among the people, taking as their examples the Apostles of the ancient Church.
He attended various European universities, and became a Canon in the Catholic church in 1497. His new system was actually presented in the Vatican gardens in 1553 before Pope Clement VII who approved, and urged Copernicus to publish it around his time.
Copernicus was never under any threat of religious persecution, instead he was urged to publish both by Catholic Bishop Guise, Cardinal Schonberg, and the Protestant Professor George Rethicus.
Copernicus referred to God in his works, and did not see his system in conflict with the Scriptures.