Polish Renaissance Man Nicolaus Copernicus was many things: a mathematician, an economist, and a linguist, among other accomplishments. But four-and-a-half centuries after he died, the scientist is mostly known for his work in astronomy. He spent so much of his life studying the movement of the stars and planets, according to History, that the Catholic Church tapped him to help reconcile issues with the Julian calendar, which was in use at the time. He spent decades putting together what he hoped was an explanation that made sense, and even so, the math didn’t work out, and Copernicus held off on publishing his seminal work on the movement of the celestial bodies until shortly before his death.

What Copernicus came up with was the notion that, rather than the Earth being the center of the universe, and all celestial bodies revolving around it (the predominant belief among European scholars at the time), the Earth revolved around the Sun. It was a revolutionary idea, but contrary to legend, he was not the first to suggest it.

Copernicus wasn't the first person to ditch the geocentric universe idea

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