Coin struck in silver which commemorates Nicolaus Copernicus. Nicolaus Copernicus - Polish lawyer, official, diplomat, physician and lower catholic clergyman, doctor of canon law, also engaged in astronomy and astrology, mathematics, economics, military strategy, cartography and philology. Copernicus is best known as an astronomer - the creator of the heliocentric model of the Solar System and probably the first heliocentric in Europe since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Author of the work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) which presents in detail his vision of the Universe. Copernicus' work, unlike the earlier concepts of Aristarchus of Samos, made a breakthrough and triggered one of the most important scientific revolutions since ancient times, called the Copernican Revolution. For this reason heliocentrism is sometimes called Copernicanism.