POLAND: He revolutionised astronomy, but for more than four centuries the last resting place of Nicolaus Copernicus - the man who developed the theory that the planets circle the sun - was a mystery.
Yesterday, however, Polish archaeologists revealed that they had discovered Copernicus's remains beneath the floor of a medieval cathedral. His body had been discovered under Frombork cathedral, where he was a canon, on the Baltic coast.
The great astronomer had been buried under one of 16 altars on the south side of the building, Jerzy Gassowski, the head of the archaeology and anthropology institute in the Polish town of Pultusk, said. "We have a skull and a few bones. We are 97 per cent certain it's him," he said. "The only way to be absolutely certain would be to do a DNA test. But since Copernicus didn't have any children, this is tricky."
The search for the astronomer, who lived from 1473 to 1543, began after a request from the local bishop. They found the skull in August after a year-long search. A police laboratory in Warsaw then used it to make a virtual reconstruction of the man's face.
"The reconstruction matched contemporary portraits. " Prof Gassowski said.
An astronomer, math-
ematician and economist, Copernicus's famous treatise, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, demolished the Ptolemaic theory that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Instead, he insisted that the planets circle the sun.