Nicolaus Copernicus - Owen (Senior Astronomer Emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Gingerich - Bog

Nicolaus Copernicus launched a quiet revolution. No scientist so radically transformed our understanding of our place in the universe as this curious bishop's doctor and church official. In his quest to discover a beautiful and coherent system to describe the motions of the planets, Copernicus placed the sun in the center of the system and made the earth a planet traveling around the sun.