Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno (1548 – 1600), was a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. His cosmological theories went beyond the Copernican model in proposing that the Sun was essentially a star, and moreover, that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. He was burned at the stake by civil authorities in 1600 after the Roman Inquisition.Bruno was deeply influenced by the astronomical facts of the universe inherited from Arab astrology, Neoplatonism and Renaissance Hermeticism. He is said to have made a threatening gesture towards his judges and to have replied: “Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam meaning “perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.”