Speaker
Description
In this paper, it will be discussed the work of two important scholars, Nicolaus Copernicus and Amerigo Vespucci, and their possible relation.
Copernicus was born in Poland and studied in Italy, and Vespucci was born in Italy and worked in Spain and Portugal. Copernicus became a medical doctor and an astronomer and finally prepared the way toward a heliocentric world system. Vespucci became an explorer of big parts of the American East coast. America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. In the last years of his life, he started to organize the systematic Castilian explorations. In comparison to Columbus, he was not an admiral or a military expedition leader but a “private man” who had enough money to organize his activities.
This is somehow the general picture and the starting point of my presentation which will be a discussion of how far these two scholars and their work are related to each other and to other scholars of the time in Italy and other European countries. Copernicus represents the East of Europe in connection to Italy whereas Vespucci connects Italy to the Iberian peninsula and further to the shores of America.
Copernicus who came to Italy as a student of medicine became the astronomer who made the earth move and the sun stand still.
Vespucci as the son of a banker became the inventor of a “Novus Mundus” and the first who really could study the southern sky.
