Who was Giordano Bruno and what did he believe?

This weekend, I watched the first episode in the new television series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”.

The programme mentioned an Italian called Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who believed that the sun was merely one of many stars. I confess that I had never heard of Bruno.

There has been some controversy over the selection and representation of Bruno which you can read here.