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Copernicus Radio Interview
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Background
Nicolaus Copernicus, born in the century of Guttenberg and Columbus, and a contemporary of Martin Luther, had a wonderful idea: he invented the solar system! He saw that if he rearranged the planetary system, fixing the sun and throwing the earth into motion, then there would be a remarkable unification, so that the fastest moving planet, Mercury, revolved closest to the sun, whereas lethargic Saturn automatically circled farthest from the sun. It was a crazy idea, because everyone imagined that people would fly off into space if the earth was dizzily spinning every 24 hours. As Galileo would later say, he couldn't admire enough those who accepted the Copernican system despite the evidence of their senses. So we'll discuss how hard it is to persuade people that unorthodox ideas might just be true, and why it can take generations to come to terms with radical new ways of seeing the world.
Owen Gingerich
Owen Gingerich is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In 1992-93 he chaired Harvard's History of Science Department.
In the past decades Professor Gingerich has become a leading authority on the 17th- century German astronomer Johannes Kepler and on Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th- century cosmologist who proposed the heliocentric system. The Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer undertook a three-decade-long personal survey of Copernicus' great book De revolutionibus, examining over 580 sixteenth-century copies in libraries scattered throughout Europe and North America, as well as those in China, Japan, and Australia. His annotated census of these books was published in 2002 as a 434-page monograph. In recognition of these studies he was awarded the Polish government's Order of Merit in 1981, and subsequently an asteroid was named in his honor. An account of his Copernican adventures, The Book Nobody Read, is in fourteen foreign editions.
In the past decades Professor Gingerich has become a leading authority on the 17th- century German astronomer Johannes Kepler and on Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th- century cosmologist who proposed the heliocentric system. The Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer undertook a three-decade-long personal survey of Copernicus' great book De revolutionibus, examining over 580 sixteenth-century copies in libraries scattered throughout Europe and North America, as well as those in China, Japan, and Australia. His annotated census of these books was published in 2002 as a 434-page monograph. In recognition of these studies he was awarded the Polish government's Order of Merit in 1981, and subsequently an asteroid was named in his honor. An account of his Copernican adventures, The Book Nobody Read, is in fourteen foreign editions.
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