Monetae cudendae ratio ("Treatise on Coin") and "Modus cudendi monetam" ("The Way to Strike Coin"). He made these the basis of a report which he presented to the Prussian Diet at Grudziądz (Graudenz) in 1522; Copernicus' friend Tiedemann Giese accompanied him on the trip to Graudenz. For the 1528 Prussian Diet, Copernicus wrote an expanded version of this paper, "Monetae cudendae ratio", setting forth a general theory of money. In the paper, Copernicus postulated the principle that "bad money drives out good", which later came to be referred to as Gresham's Law after a later describer, Sir Thomas Gresham. This phenomenon had been
Gresham's law been noted much earlier, in the 14th century, by Nicole Oresme. In the year that Gresham was born, 1519, it was described by Nicolaus Copernicus in a treatise called "Monetae cudendae ratio": "bad (debased) coinage drives good (un-debased) coinage out of circulation." Copernicus was aware of the practice of exchanging bad coins for good ones and melting down the latter or sending them abroad, and he seems to have drawn up some notes on this subject while he was at Olsztyn in 1519. He made them the basis of a report which he presented to the Prussian Diet held in