Nicolaus Copernicus was the orphaned son of a copper merchant . In his book 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' he presented an Earth-shattering new idea – that maybe it wasn't actually at the centre of the universe as everyone believed, but in fact, revolved around the Sun. Although it would take another century until Galileo was able to prove him right, Copernicus's book, published in 1543 in Nuremberg, would mark the beginning of a very real revolution in science.