Giordano Bruno

What if every star in the sky is another sun with its own planets—and maybe even people? Giordano Bruno said exactly that. In the late 1500s he stunned Europe by imagining a universe without center or edge.

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) was an Italian thinker during the Renaissance. The single most important thing we’ll focus on is his idea that the universe is infinite and full of other worlds. He dared to say Earth was not the center of everything.

He began as a Dominican friar but left that life to travel, teach, and write. Bruno supported Copernicus’s sun-centered model and pushed it further, imagining countless stars as suns with their own planets. He published his famous book On the Infinite Universe and Worlds in 1584. Because church leaders called his views heresy, he was arrested, held for many years, tried by the Roman Inquisition, and executed in Rome in 1600.

Why this matters: Bruno helped people imagine a much bigger cosmos and to keep asking big questions. He didn’t have modern proof, but his courage to speak new ideas makes him a symbol of curiosity and free thought. Next time you look up at the stars, ask: what else might be out there?