Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Poland. His father a wealthy businessman, but Copernicus grew up to be a polymath— he was an astronomer, mathematician, and artist. In 1543, he published a book that shocked everyone. He said that the Earth didn’t stay still—it actually followed a path around the sun. So did the other planets. He proposed that the Sun, and not the Earth, was at the center of everything. This is called Heliocentric Model of the Universe. In those days, the Church was very powerful and controlled what people thought and believed. They rejected Copernicus’s heliocentric model. Copernicus died the same year his book was published. He didn’t have a chance to defend his ideas.