the astronomer who first said that the earth and the plannets revolved around the sun

[aamir_raheel]

[squarebear]

Copernicus?

[squarebear]

Forget that. It was Galileo

[boxtops]

already answered in Science, duplicate posting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

[society]

http://tinyurl.com/27uhpkj

[factor-fiction]

triplicate posting- twice in here, once in Science.
Asked 3 times and got 3 different answers

[jno]

I think squarebear was right the first time

[johnny.5]

my teenage daughter

she seems to think the world revolves aroud her

[MarkRae]

Copernicus, as far as can be reasonably known i.e. other astronomers may have been heliocentrists earlier than Copernicus but records of their thoughts either no longer survive or never existed in the first place...

[ABerrant]

And yet a reference in Archimedes' 3rd Century BC book 'The Sand Reckoner' describes the heliocentric theory of the solar system proposed by Aristarchus of Samos thus:

"His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the orbit..."

[MarkRae]

Yes indeed, but that's second-hand... The only surviving work by Aristarchus of Samos, "On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon", proposes a geocentric model...

[ABerrant]

So "records of their thoughts" excludes second-hand accounts?

[MarkRae]

Inasmuch as no direct record remains of Aristarchus' heliocentric theory...

[ABerrant]

Eppur si muove.

[MarkRae]

So Galileo is supposed to have said, yes...