Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (, UMK) is located in Toruń, Poland. It was named after Nicolaus Copernicus who was born in this town in 1473. The first institution of higher education in Torun, the Toruń Academic Gymnasium was founded in 1568 on Piekary street. It was one of the first universities in northern Poland. The Academic Gymnasium was the precursor to scientific and cultural life (including the first museum created in 1594) in the region. Thanks to the efforts of Heinrich Stroband, city mayor in 1594, academics in Toruń received good working conditions for
Nicolaus Copernicus common in the period, the spellings of both the toponym and the surname vary greatly. Copernicus "was rather indifferent about orthography". During his childhood, about 1480, the name of his father (and thus of the future astronomer) was recorded in Thorn as "Niclas Koppernigk". At Kraków he signed himself, in Latin, "Nicolaus Nicolai de Torunia" (Nicolaus, son of Nicolaus, of Toruń). At Bologna, in 1496, he registered in the "Matricula Nobilissimi Germanorum Collegii, resp. Annales Clarissimae Nacionis Germanorum", of the "Natio Germanica Bononiae", as "Dominus Nicolaus Kopperlingk de Thorn – IX grosseti". At Padua he signed himself "Nicolaus Copernik", later