Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"The Nicolaus Copernicus Monument is installed in outside the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium in Montreal's Space for Life, and was previously installed in Chaboillez Square, outside the Montreal Planetarium. The statue was originally displayed for Expo 67, and was relocated to its current location in 2013.
Artist: Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1844), Danish sculptor
Materials
Statue: bronze
Base: concrete
Dimensions:
Statue: 2.7 m × 1.1 m
Base: 1.8 m × 1.5 m
Manufacturing: Bronze: Lauritz Rasmussen, Denmark, posthumous draw from plaster molds and original made in 1966 under the supervision of Dr. Dyveke Helste, Thorvaldsen Museum director
Inaugurated in 1967, Montreal World's Fair
Acquired by the City of Montreal: 1968."
The work depicts Copernicus, larger than life, sitting on a chair and holding an instrument that appears to be a scale model of the solar system.
Wikipedia (
visit link) also informs us:
"Nicolaus Copernicus (/ko?'p??rn?k?s, k?-/; Polish: Mikolaj Kopernik; German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; Niklas Koppernigk; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance- and Reformation-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, likely independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.
The publication of Copernicus' model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.
Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was also a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money – a key concept in economics – and in 1519 he formulated an economics principle that later came to be called Gresham's law."