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
Northern Renaissance of European history. Many scholars see it as a unique time with characteristics all its own. A second group views the Renaissance as the first two to three centuries of a larger era in European history usually called early modern Europe, which began in the late fifteenth century and ended on the eve of the French Revolution (1789) or with the close of the Napoleonic era (1815). Some social historians reject the concept of the Renaissance altogether. Historians also argue over how much the Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages and whether it was the beginning of the modern world,