Nicolaus Copernicus is known that Copernicus knew Polish on a par with German and Latin. Historian Michael Burleigh describes the nationality debate as a "totally insignificant battle" between German and Polish scholars during the interwar period. Polish astronomer Konrad Rudnicki calls the discussion a "fierce scholarly quarrel in ... times of nationalism" and describes Copernicus as an inhabitant of a German-speaking territory that belonged to Poland, himself being of mixed Polish-German extraction. Czesław Miłosz describes the debate as an "absurd" projection of a modern understanding of nationality onto Renaissance people, who identified with their home territories rather than with a nation. Similarly,
Nicolaus Copernicus feast day on 23 May. Wrocław-Strachowice International Airport is named after Nicolaus Copernicus (Copernicus Airport Wrocław) Contemporary literary and artistic works inspired by Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus (; ; ; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, in all likelihood independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier. The publication of Copernicus' model in his book "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the