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Meaning & History
Nicolaus Copernicus is a mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe. His surname comes from the village of Koperniki, which was his ancestral village.The etymology of the name Copernicus has been debated especially in the context of Copernicus' biography, since at least the 1870s, surrounding two competing proposals, one suggesting the name root origin from the German word Kupfer meaning "copper", the other from the Polish word koper meaning "dill". The suffix -nik (or plural -niki) denotes a Slavic and Polish agent noun.