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Nicolaus Copernicus — was a mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the sun was stationary in the center of the universe and the earth revolved around it. Disturbed by the failure of Ptolemy's geocentric model of the universe to follow Aristotle's requirement for the uniform circular motion of all celestial bodies and determined to eliminate Ptolemy's equant, an imaginary point around which the bodies seemed to follow that requirement, Copernicus decided that he could achieve his goal only through a heliocentric model.

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He thereby created a concept of a universe in which the distances of the planets from the sun bore a direct relationship to the size of their orbits. At the time Copernicus's heliocentric idea was very controversial; nevertheless, it was the start of a change in the way the world was viewed, and Copernicus came to be seen as the initiator of the Scientific Revolution.

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February , the youngest of four children of Nicolaus Copernicus, Sr. The city, on the Vistula River, had been an important inland port in the Hanseatic League. However, fighting between the Order of the Teutonic Knights and the Prussian Union in alliance with the Kingdom of Poland ended in , and West Prussia, which included Torun, was ceded to Poland, and Torun was declared a free city of the Polish kingdom.

Thus the child of a German family was a subject of the Polish crown. The father died in , and the children's maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode — , took them under his protection. Watzenrode was a very successful cleric — he was to become bishop of Warmia Ermland in German in — and he both facilitated his nephew's advancement in the church and directed his education.

In Copernicus enrolled in the University of Cracow.