Life
Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn), in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland.
His father was a merchant from Kraków and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń merchant. Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. His brother Andreas (Andrew) became an Augustinian canon at Frombork (Frauenburg). His sister Barbara, named after her mother, became a Benedictine nun and, in her final years (she died after 1517), prioress of a convent in Chełmno (Kulm). His sister Katharina married the businessman and Toruń city councilor Barthel Gertner and left five children, whom Copernicus looked after to the end of his life.
Copernicus never married or had children.
"Towards the close of 1542, he was seized with apoplexy and paralysis." He died on 24 May 1543, on the day that he was presented with an advance copy of his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium.
Read more about this topic: Nicolaus Copernicus
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
—A.C. (Algernon Charles)
“Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)