Through the Watzenrodes' extensive family relationships by marriage, Copernicus was related to wealthy families of Toruń (Thorn), Danzig (Gdansk) and Elbing (Elbląg), and to prominent Polish noble families of Prussia: the Czapskis, Działyńskis, Konopackis and Kościeleckis. They soon became one of the wealthiest and most influential patrician families. The Watzenrode family, like the Kopernik family, had come from Silesia from near Schweidnitz (Świdnica), and after 1360 had settled in Toruń. The Modlibógs were a prominent Polish family who had been well known in Poland's history since 1271. Nicolaus's mother, Barbara Watzenrode, was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń patrician and city councillor, Lucas Watzenrode the Elder (deceased 1462), and Katarzyna (widow of Jan Peckau), mentioned in other sources as Katarzyna Rüdiger gente Modlibóg (deceased 1476). In the Second Peace of Thorn (1466), the Teutonic Order formally relinquished all claims to its western province, which as Royal Prussia remained a region of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland until the First (1772) and Second (1793) Partitions of Poland.Ĭopernicus's father married Barbara Watzenrode, the astronomer's mother, between 14. In 1454 he mediated negotiations between Poland's Cardinal Zbigniew Oleśnicki and the Prussian cities for repayment of war loans. Nicolaus's father was actively engaged in the politics of the day and supported Poland and the cities against the Teutonic Order. In this war, Hanseatic cities like Danzig and Toruń, Nicolaus Copernicus's hometown, chose to support the Polish King, Casimir IV Jagiellon, who promised to respect the cities' traditional vast independence, which the Teutonic Order had challenged. Toruń, situated on the Vistula River, was at that time embroiled in the Thirteen Years' War, in which the Kingdom of Poland and the Prussian Confederation, an alliance of Prussian cities, gentry and clergy, fought the Teutonic Order over control of the region. He moved from Kraków to Toruń around 1458. Nicolaus was named after his father, who appears in records for the first time as a well-to-do merchant who dealt in copper, selling it mostly in Danzig (Gdańsk). The father, Mikołaj the Elder, likely the son of Jan, came from the Kraków line. In the 14th century, members of the family began moving to various other Silesian cities, to the Polish capital, Kraków (1367), and to Toruń (1400). The village's name has been variously spelled Kopernik, Copernik, Copernic, Kopernic, Coprirnik, and today Koperniki. Father's familyĬopernicus's father's family can be traced to a village in Silesia between Nysa ( Neiße) and Prudnik ( Neustadt).

Copernicus never married and is not known to have had children, but from at least 1531 until 1539 his relations with Anna Schilling, a live-in housekeeper, were seen as scandalous by two bishops of Warmia who urged him over the years to break off relations with his 'mistress'. His sister Katharina married the businessman and Toruń city councilor Barthel Gertner and left five children, whom Copernicus looked after to the end of his life. His sister Barbara, named after her mother, became a Benedictine nun and, in her final years, prioress of a convent in Chełmno (Kulm) she died after 1517.

His brother Andreas (Andrew) became an Augustinian canon at Frombork (Frauenburg). Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. His father was a merchant from Kraków and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toruń merchant. Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Toruń (Thorn), in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. 17 ( right), it forms Muzeum Mikołaja Kopernika. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money-a key concept in economics-and in 1519 he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law. From 1497 he was a Warmian Cathedral chapter canon. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. Ĭopernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. The publication of Copernicus's model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ( On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution. In all likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier. Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – ) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center.

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