Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Nicolaus Copernicus (/kɵˈpɜrnɪkəs/;[1] Polish: Mikołaj Kopernik [miˈkɔwaj kɔˈpɛrɲik] ( listen); German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe.[a] The publication of this model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543 is considered a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.

Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been a part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. He was a polyglot and polymath who obtained a doctorate in canon law and also practiced as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. Like the rest of his family, he was a third order Dominican.[3] In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money – a key concept in economics – and in 1519 he formulated a version of what later became known as Gresham's law.[4]