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
Nicolaus Copernicus a natural choice for German-speaking students, regardless of their ethnicity or self-identification. The surname "Kopernik", "Copernik", "Koppernigk" is recorded in Kraków from c. 1350, in various spellings, apparently given to people from the village of Koperniki (prior to 1845 rendered Kopernik, "Copernik, Copirnik" and "Koppirnik") in the Duchy of Nysa. Nicolas Copernicus' great-grandfather is recorded as having received citizenship in Kraków in 1386. The toponym "Kopernik" (modern "Koperniki") has been variously tied to the Polish word for "dill" ("koper") and German for copper ("Kupfer"). The suffix -nik (or plural -niki) denotes a Slavic and Polish agent noun, though. As was