Which Polish astronomer's De Revolutionibus moved the Sun to the center?

Copernicus, whose book was published in 1543 as he was dying - legend has it a copy was placed in his hands on the last day. He had circulated the idea privately for decades and delayed publishing, and the usual explanation of fear of the Church is probably wrong: his worry appears to have been ridicule from other astronomers.

The book also came with a preface he did not write. A Lutheran theologian overseeing the printing inserted an unsigned note claiming the heliocentric model was merely a calculating convenience rather than a claim about reality - which contradicted Copernicus flatly and was believed to be his own view for decades until Kepler identified the author.

His system was not obviously better at predicting anything. He kept perfect circles, which forced him to keep epicycles, so his model was about as complicated as Ptolemy's and no more accurate - the case for it was aesthetic and structural rather than empirical. It only became decisively superior once Kepler replaced the circles with ellipses sixty years later, which is a useful reminder that a revolutionary idea can arrive without immediately working better.