Nicolaus Copernicus surviving primary documents on the early years of Copernicus's childhood and education. Copernicus biographers assume that Watzenrode first sent young Copernicus to St. John's School, at Toruń, where he himself had been a master. Later, according to Armitage, the boy attended the Cathedral School at Włocławek, up the Vistula River from Toruń, which prepared pupils for entrance to the University of Kraków, Watzenrode's alma mater in Poland's capital. In the winter semester of 1491–92 Copernicus, as "Nicolaus Nicolai de Thuronia", matriculated together with his brother Andrew at the University of Kraków (now Jagiellonian University). Copernicus began his studies in the
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