Copernicus Award Copernicus Award The Nicolaus Copernicus Polish-German Research Award (also known as Copernicus Award) is a biannual science award conferred by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Foundation for Polish Science "to the individuals most active in Polish-German scientific cooperation who have made exceptional research achievements as a result of that cooperation." The award was established in 2006 and is named after Renaissance astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543). It carries a cash prize of €200,000 shared equally by two winners, one from Germany and one from Poland. In order to be eligible for the award, candidates must have at least a doctoral degree
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