Nicolaus Copernicus pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution. Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was also a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. 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. Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Thorn (modern Toruń), in
Nicolas Perrot Nicolas Perrot Nicolas Perrot (c.1644–1717), a French explorer, fur trader, and diplomat, was one of the first European men to travel in the Upper Mississippi Valley, in what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nicolas Perrot was born in France between 1641 and 1644, perhaps at Darcey in Burgundy, where his father was lieutenant of justice. Perrot traveled to New France around 1660 with the Jesuit missionaries. He journeyed with several to the Western Great Lakes, where they intended to preach to the Native Americans, reaching present-day Wisconsin in 1665. He earned the friendship of the natives by swapping furs for