What is Nicolaus Copernicus known for?

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Thorn (modern Toruń), in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. His father was a merchant from Kraków and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń merchant. Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. read more

Copernicus, Nicolaus: heliocentric system Engraving of the solar system from Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri VI, 2nd ed. (1566; “Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”), the first published illustration of Copernicus's heliocentric system. read more

Copernicus finished the first manuscript of his book,"De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") in 1532. In it, Copernicus established that the planets orbited the sun rather than the Earth. He laid out his model of the solar system and the path of the planets. read more