Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
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Copernicus stayed here while in Bologna! |
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At that time, he worked for the army's intelligence unit, and earned
a life-time income. He then became a professor at the University of
Padua. While there, he became interested in proving the earth was
moving around the sun.
Galilei of course got this heliocentric concept from Copernicus, but not many people know that Copernicus was a student in Italy. He even got his degree from the University of Padua.
Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland. His parents came from Krakow and were rich, but they died when he was very young. His maternal uncle took care of him, and financed his education.
Copernicus studied at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. He was under a strong family pressure to become a Catholic priest. He indeed rose to the rank of canon in the church hierarchy, but his real interest was in astronomy.
Copernicus then went to Italy and studied medicine and law in Bologna, Padua, and Ferrara. During his time in Italy, astrology was a required subject for medical science. Copernicus studied the ideas of Cicero and Plato on the structure of the universe while studying medicine in Padua.
He went back to Poland in 1503 to work for his uncle who was an influential man in Heilsberg, and then settled down at the town of Frombork in 1510. He died there in 1943.
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I became interested in his style of writing when the chairman of my department in 1979 told me my papers are very difficult to read, because they are written in the way Copernicus tried to avoid inquisition. He said this out of frustration, but I was highly flattered. What he said was true. Indeed, my papers were all modified to satisfy the referees. Those referees are not as powerful as the pope, but all of them have the herod complex. I cannot complain too much about them because I also have my herod complex.
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I used to think Krakow is the place to study about Copernicus.
I went there several times and brought back many photos from
there. See
but the Copernicus statue at the campus of Jagiellonian University is
embarrassingly small.
Indeed, it was not until I started making this webapge that I
found out his operational base was the town of Frombork on the
Vistula Lagoon.
I have never been to Frombark, but I visited another important city
on the Vistula Lagoon. On the northeastern corner of this Lagoon,
there is the Russian city of Kaliningrad, which before 1945, was
the East Prussian city of Koeningsberg. In 2005, I went to the
Russian city of Kaliningrad to see how Immanuel Kant was able to
formulate his philosophy based on the geographical of his area
including of course the Lagoon. Kant was of course Einstein's
philosopher. I brought back
In addition, Hermann Minkowski and Arnold Sommerfeld studied at
the Univ. of Koenigsberg. Sommerfeld was also a great teacher.
His doctoral and post-doctoral students include Werner Heisenberg,
Wolfgang Pauli, Peter Debye, Hans Bethe, and just about everybody
in that generation. Indeed, Arnold Sommerfeld was the one who
translated the wisdom of Koenigsberg into modern physics. If we
include Copernicus, the Koenigsberg wisdom came from the Holy
Lagoon of Vistula. I should visit the Lagoon from the Poland
side and get the full blessing.
The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia serves as one of the
important scientific resources for Amerians. This year, the
Institute is hosting an exhibition on Galileo and Medcici.
Philadelphia is about 200 km from my house. I was going to
go to the exhibition before making this webpage, but I was
too busy. What Americans will learn from the exhibit is that
Galileo had a strong backing from the powerful Medici family
when he was advocating his heliocentric view of the worl. I
knew this before, and here is my webpage on this subject,
The Medici clan in Florence was very generous to Renaissance
artists, and the entire city of
Florence is an art museum these days. The Medici
family also had a foresight in science. They invited Galileo
Galilei to their city and provided all necessary supports. The
Medici Clan at that time also had a very strong power against
the papal authority. This is the reason why Galileo was able to
put up the fight that changed the world. What Galileo did
in the past is well known.
The question is whether Galileo is a relevant issue these days.
We are now in the Lorentzian world. Maxwell's equations are
Lorentz-covariant. High-energy particles from cosmic rays or
accelerators all obey Einstein's equation for formula for energy
and momentum. However, the transition from the Galilei system
to the Lorentz-covariant system is not completely understood.
We routinely say that the Lorentz transformation becomes
a Galilei transformation in the low-speed limit. However, this
kinematical transformation was carried out systematically by
Inonu and Wigner in 1953. They formulated the mathematical
procedure called "Group Contraction" to deal with this problem.
We can obtain the Galilean group by contracting the Lorentz
group. I am fortunate enough to have a copy of a review article
Erdal Inonu wrote in 1998. Here is
Erdal's father,Ismet Inonu, who was the president of from 1938 to
1950. During World War II, he kept Turkey out of the war. When
his party lost in the general election, Inonu carried out the first
peaceful transition of power in Turkey. He remained active in
Turkish politics until his death in 1973.
While his father was the president, Erdal Inonu went to Caltech to
get his PhD degree. He then went to Princeton to work with Eugene
Wigner. At that time, many of Wigner's papers were written in
German, and Erdal Inonu was able to make Wigner happy. In 1953,
Inonu and Wigner published their history-making paper on group
contractions.
After returning to Turkey, Erdal Ininu also served in various
high-ranking governmental positions, including deputy prime
minister and foreign minister until 1993. He served his country
well and is still respected by every Turkish citizen I meet.
Whenever I go to Turkey these days, I bring with me my photo with
Erdal Wigner and Nokolaj Gromov, and show it to the people whenever
appropriate to get VIP treatment. When I dined at the Hotel
Marmara restaurant in 2008, I showed my Inonu photo to my waiter.
He called all of his colleagues to come to have this photo.
What did I do to make Erdal Inonu happy? In 1939, Wigner published
his paper on the little groups of the Lorentz group which dictate
the internal space-time symmetry of elementary particles. From
1985 to 1990, I worked with Wigner to combine his 1939 paper and
his 1953 paper with Inonu on group contractions. Wigner was very
sharp in 1985, but he was showing a sign of his age toward 1990.
I was fortunate enough to publish the paper on
In spite of what I said above, the most important issue is how to
move quantum mechanics from the Galilean world to the Lorentz-covariant
system. Here we have to deal with waves. For running waves, we know
how to do, and we have Feynman diagrams. However, for standing waves,
we have to worry about boundary conditions. Do you know how to
Lorentz-transform boundary conditions while space and time variables are
linearly mixed? This has been my lifetime job
since 1965, while the rest
of the world did not know. I took the Copernicus approach in carrying
out my research.
Look at the map of
the Lagoon. It geography is strikingly similar to
that of Venice with its own lagoon. It was Galilei's research
base. I visited
Galilei's house in Padua last summer in order to get
his blessing. Padua is a major city in Venice's hinterland.
This greater Venice area is called "Veneto" and has a very rich
history. It is exciting to compare the geography/history of
this area with that of the Vistula Lagoon is exciting, but let
me stop here. I have been to the Venice/Veneto area several times
and maintain the webpage entitled
Y.S. Kim (2009.6.15)
copyright@2009 by Y. S. Kim, unless otherwise specified. The portrait of Copernicus is from a postcard I purchased from the Jagiellonian University book store. The map of the Vistula Lagoon and the portrait of Galileo Galilei are from the public domain.