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Nicolaus (or Nicholas) Copernicus (1473-1543) was born in the Hanseatic League city of Thorn, Prussia (Latin Borussia) (now Torun, Poland) and was called Thornensis Prussus Mathematicus or Tornaus Borussus Mathematicus. He was an astronomer who developed a heliocentric (sun-centered) theory of the solar system. He was also a church canon, an astrologer, and a medic. Copernicus died and was buried in Frauenburg.

Copernicus had worked, lived, and administered the Prussian diocese of Ermeland from his house in Frauenburg, Prussia (now Fromburg, Poland) after his uncle, who raised him, died. His uncle, the prince bishop Lucas Watzenrode, had taken over the administration from the previous bishop Nicolas von Tuengen. Copernicus worked with Albert of Brandenburg Prussia on the Prussian coin reform and published a booklet on the value of money. During the years of uprisings before, during, and after the Reformation, the bishop Watzenrode and his nephew Copernicus were some of the few who held steadfast to the Catholic belief, when first Prussia in 1525 and later other German and northern states became secularized and Protestant. Ermeland owed it to them, that during that upheaval it did not become Protestant as did the other dioceses of Prussia.

Copernicus's major theory was published in the imperial city of Nuremberg, in the book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") in the year of his death 1543. Though he had arrived at it decades earlier and the engravers of Nuremberg had worked on the illustrations, Copernicus was very hesitant to proclaim it, due to Catholic opposition to contrary ideas. He had to be persuaded by friends, and this book marks the beginning of the shift from a geocentric (and anthropocentric) universe. Copernicus held that the Earth is another planet revolving around the fixed sun once a year and turning on its axis once a day. He arrived at the correct order of the planets and explained the precession of the equinoxes correctly by a slow change in the position of the Earth's rotational axis. His theory, unfortunately, still had some serious defects, among them circular as opposed to elliptical orbits and epicycles, that made it no more precise in predicting ephemerides than the then current tables based on Ptolemy's model. But it had great influence on scientists such as Galileo and Kepler, who adopted, championed and, in Kepler's case, improved the model. The book was put on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1616 by the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus produced the first observational evidence for Copernicus' theory.

Legend says that a printed copy of De revolutionibus was put in Copernicus's hands shortly before his death so that he could say goodbye to his opus vitae. He awoke from his stroke-induced coma, looked at his book, and died peacefully.

The Twentieth-Century Question of Copernicus's Nationality, whether Polish or German?

This is a controversy that is directly linked to twentieth-century power politics. Up until then people knew that the Hanseatic League cities were German speaking and the nationality and lawful rights and duties were not of a country but the citizenship of the burghers of a city. Hanseatic cities were self-governing and had received these privileges from the empire. Twentieth-century land take-overs by military means has brought up this question, which for centuries before would have been unthinkable.

In recent decades you can find statements such as:

Copernicus is generally regarded as Polish, and in terms of the political geography of his time, this is undoubtedly correct. Torun, his place of birth, had passed from the suzerainty of the Order of Teutonic Knights to that of the King of Poland shortly after his father's arrival there from Krakow. However, ethnically both his mother and father were most likely of German origin. The family name can be traced to the town of Koppernigk near Neisse in Silesia, which was inhabited by Germans in the 14th century at the time of emigration from that region eastwards into Poland. No known letter written by him was in the Polish language -- they were all in Latin or German. However, that means little, since Latin was the international language of scholars, and the letters in German may have been addressed to Germans and therefore written in that language.

He was definitely Polish by allegiance (in terms of the politics of the time). In 1512, when he was Canon of the Chapter of Frombork, Copernicus swore allegiance to King Sigismund I of Poland. In 1520, after the outbreak of war between Poland and the Teutonic Knights, Copernicus was a member of the Polish embassy to the Grand Master requesting restoration of Braniewo to Poland. He also organized the defence of Olsztyn against the Order.

Outside link to current Polish Frombork (Frauenburg) Museum website with portraits of Copernicus showing inscriptions: http://www.frombork.art.pl/Ang10.htm