In what city was Nicolaus Copernicus born?

Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Toruń, a city in what is now northern Poland. He was born on 19 February 1473 in the medieval city then known in German as Thorn, located in Royal Prussia within the Kingdom of Poland.

Copernicus came from a prosperous merchant family and later studied at universities in Kraków, Bologna, Padua, and Ferrara. His education included astronomy, mathematics, law, and medicine. His birthplace connected him to a major trading city on the Vistula River, not to Poland’s later capital, Warsaw.

Copernicus became famous for developing a Sun-centered model of the cosmos. His book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in 1543, argued that Earth rotates daily and travels around the Sun yearly. A common mix-up is identifying Kraków as his birthplace because he studied there; Kraków was important to his education, but Toruń was his birthplace.