Nicolaus Copernicus was born on February 19, 1473, in the city of Thorn, now known as Toruń, in Poland. In his early life, after his father died when Copernicus was about 10 years old, his uncle Bishop Łukasz Watzenrode took him under his care and ensured he received a good education. Copernicus studied at the Krakow Academy (now Jagiellonian University) and later pursued law and medicine at universities in Italy, including Bologna, Padua, and Ferrara. He worked as a church canon and spent his time performing church duties, practicing medicine, and studying astronomy. His interest in astronomy grew especially during his studies in Bologna, where a mathematics professor encouraged him. Copernicus formulated the heliocentric theory, which proposed that the Sun, rather than the Earth, was at the center of the universe.