Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a heliocentric model of the universe which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center. The publication of Copernicus' book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, just before his death in 1543, is considered a major event in the history of science. It began the Copernican Revolution and contributed importantly to the rise of the ensuing Scientific Revolution. Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. One of the great polymaths of the Renaissance, Copernicus was also a jurist with a doctorate in law, a physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classics scholar, translator, artist, governor, diplomat, and economist who in 1517 set down a quantity theory of money, a principal concept in economics to the present day, and formulated Gresham's Law in the year of Thomas Gresham's birth.