In what year did Nicolaus Copernicus die?

Nicolaus Copernicus died in 1543.

The Renaissance astronomer died on 24 May 1543, in Frombork, in the Kingdom of Poland, at about age 70. His death came as his landmark book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, was being published. The work argued for a Sun-centered arrangement in which Earth rotates and also travels around the Sun.

Copernicus was not immediately celebrated as the sole founder of modern astronomy. His system still used circular orbits and mathematical devices inherited from ancient astronomy, and the book’s full impact unfolded over later decades through the work of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton.

A common mix-up is to confuse Copernicus’s death year with other milestones in the Copernican Revolution. He was born in 1473, completed much of his astronomical work earlier, and died in the same year that the first edition of De revolutionibus appeared. The date 1543 therefore marks both the end of his life and the public arrival of his major theory.