John Freely elegantly tells the eventful life of one of the most important scholars of the Renaissance. This book combines biography and exciting history of science. We owe the probably most important scientific discovery of modern times, that the earth and the planets circle around the sun and the earth rotates once in 24 hours around its axis, to Copernicus (1473-1543). He was one of the greatest universal scholars of all time: linguist, lawyer, doctor, diplomat, politician, mathematician, scientist, artist, clergyman and astronomer. At the same time he united the knowledge of antiquity, the medieval Islamic world as well as the modern natural sciences. In his new biography, John Freely describes the eventful life of Copernicus, explains his theories, brings to mind the breathless epoch of the early modern age and the Renaissance and.