Summary:
- Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who lived in the 16th century and is considered the founder of the heliocentric model of the solar system.
- Copernicus proposed that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun, rather than the Earth being at the center of the universe as was commonly believed at the time.
- Copernicus' revolutionary ideas challenged the prevailing Ptolemaic model of the universe and paved the way for the scientific revolution that followed.