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Who were Nicolaus Copernicusās parents?
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Nicolaus Copernicus
Portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus, 1580, from the Town Hall in ToruÅ, Poland; in the collection of Muzeum OkrÄgowe w Toruniu (Regional Museum in ToruÅ). In his book De revolutionibus, he proposed that the Sun was the center of the solar system and that the planets circle the Sun.
Nicolaus Copernicusās father, also named Nicolaus, was a well-to-do merchant. His mother, Barbara Watzenrode, was a member of a leading merchant family.1