Nicolaus copernicus family life
1. Life and Works. Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February , the youngest of four children of Nicolaus Copernicus, Sr., a well-to-do merchant who had moved to Torun from Cracow, and Barbara Watzenrode, the daughter of a leading merchant family in Torun. The city, on the Vistula River, had been an important inland port in the Hanseatic.