Giordano Bruno Philosopher

• Gender: Male
• Citizenship: Italy
• Born: Jan 1, 1548
• Died: Feb 17, 1600

Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer. He is celebrated for his cosmological theories, which went even further than the then-novel Copernican model, proposing that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets, and moreover the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own. He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite, thus having no celestial body at its "center".

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern. The Inquisition found him guilty, and in 1600 he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori. After his death he gained considerable fame, particularly among 19th- and early 20th-century commentators who regarded him as a martyr for science, though scholars emphasize that Bruno's astronomical views were at most a minor component of the theological and philosophical beliefs that led to his trial.