Dava Sobel: The secret of Copernicus

BUR pages 370 I was fascinated by astronomy right from the start, ever since I saw Piero Angela's documentaries as a boy. The cosmos, the planets, the comets, had for me, and still have today, an enormous force of attraction.

So, in the 1989 at the maturity exam I talked about geocentric and heliocentric theories (I can not remember the title of the theme any more but I remember that I was able to insert Ptolemy and Copernicus anyway).

Since then I have tried to cultivate this passion as possible, with the little time available, especially reading and keeping me informed (and sooner or later I will start using the telescope purchased a few years ago).

How could I ignore the biography of Copernicus that happened to me during my last visit to the IBS? In fact I could not!

The author is Dava Sobel, American journalist and science divulger.

In his book, I found not only the biography of Copernicus, one of my myths, but above all the story of a book, the "De revolutionibus", written and published by Copernicus with the help of Retico in the distant 1543, the year in which Copernicus dies.

The De revolutionibus saw the light thanks to the insistence of several characters close to Copernicus, I think the most important was the mathematician Retico, who became a pupil of Copernicus and convinced him before and then helped to publish his work.

Copernicus had in fact some qualms, he thought, and not wrongly, that "making the earth move around the Sun" would have raised great criticism from people who knew nothing about astronomy but who had to defend the truth of the sacred texts.

In fact, Copernicus was right, the subsequent story of Giordano Bruno and Galileo demonstrates this.

Before Copernicus, other thinkers had hypothesized that the sun was the center of the system but had remained unheard. The Ptolemaic system had taken hold and, despite its inaccuracies, was the basis of world calendars.

The book is full of curiosities about the Poland of 1500, on astronomers and mathematicians, on the use of horoscope for the great of the world, on the church of the time and the administration of the territory, curiosity that in itself would be enough to push us to read. Yet the author reserves the reader a further pleasant surprise, in the second part in fact presents a drama in two acts, the main character is Copernicus, surrounded by Retico, the housekeeper (and companion) of Copernicus, Anna ... and others. A drama that allows us to approach the figure of Copernicus living with him the last years of his life.

Copernicus had the merit of reopening a road just traced, others (first of all Rhaetian) followed him. Thanks to them today we can say we know better the universe that surrounds us.

Alessandro Rugolo