Giordano Bruno (1548-17.02.1600) was an Italian thinker, a fighter against scholasticism and theology and an active supporter of the teaching of N. Copernicus. He extended Copernicus's heliocentric theory of the structure of the world, putting forward a number of propositions that were ahead of his own age and were confirmed by later astronomical discoveries (the idea of the infinity of the Universe, of an infinite multitude of worlds, of the existence in our Solar System of other planets unknown at the time, of the rotation of the Sun and the stars about an axis, of the habitability of other worlds, and of the unity of the laws of nature). Bruno's cosmological ideas were of great importance for the development of science and of the world view. For his advanced views he was persecuted by churchmen, was accused of heresy by the Roman Inquisition and was burned at the stake.