Nuremberg printed the first edition of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus in 1543.
The Latin book, whose full title means On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, was printed in Nuremberg by Johannes Petreius. It presented Nicolaus Copernicus’s mathematical case for a Sun-centered cosmos, challenging the long-dominant Ptolemaic model in which Earth stood motionless at the center.
Copernicus worked on the manuscript for decades and hesitated to publish it. Georg Joachim Rheticus helped persuade him, later overseeing the project’s progress. During printing, Andreas Osiander added an anonymous preface suggesting that the heliocentric model should be treated as a calculating device rather than necessarily as physical truth. That preface later became one of the book’s most discussed features.
The book’s publication date is especially notable because Copernicus died in 1543, traditionally said to have received a copy shortly before his death. Nuremberg is sometimes confused with Basel, where the second edition appeared in 1566, or Wittenberg, associated with an earlier related publication and Copernican scholarship.