SOURCE: "The Exposure of the Fraudulent Address to the Reader in Copernicus' Revolutions" in Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. XIV, No. 3, Fall, 1983, pp. 283-91.

In the following article, Rosen discusses the reasons for and outcome of Andreas Osiander'inserting an anonymous preface into the first publication of Copernicus's De revolutionibus.,

In opposition to the immemorial belief that the earth is stationary, Nicholas Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Nuremborg, 1543)¹ proclaimed that the earth is a planet in motion. On its title page this epoch-making work announced the names of its author and publisher. But it gave no hint that between author Copernicus (1473-1543) in distant Frombork (Frauenburg) and the printing process in publisher Johannes Petreius' shop in Nuremberg, two successive editors had intervened. The first was Copernicus' only disciple, George Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574), unswervingly loyal to his master both before and after the publication of the Revolutions. But Rheticus could not...