A rare discovery of the book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus has been made at the Lund University Library in Sweden. The book had seemingly been hiding in plain sight for over 100 years, and was only discovered when over 800,000 library catalog cards were digitised.
"This is the sort of information that disappears through the centuries, but is now able to be discovered again thanks to technology," says Kristian Knutsson, librarian at Lund University Library.
The recovered book belongs to the second edition from 1566, printed in Basel, Switzerland. Some 276 copies of the first edition have been identified, along with 325 copies of the second edition.
Translated as On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, the book is considered by many to be a fundamental turning point for science, laying the groundwork for the 16th century Scientific Revolution. It proposed the heliocentric model of the universe, placing the Sun at the centre, rather than the Earth.
"This is beyond a doubt one of the most significant scientific books in history," says Kristian Knutsson.
The discovery in Lund was made when a library patron requested a newer version of the famous book. It had previously only been possible to search for the author's name. When the library cards had been digitised, however, the entire text on the cards could be searched - leading to the surprising find.
As it turns out, the Copernicus book had been bound together with another book, meaning there was only a note of it on a card that belonged to another author.
"When we discovered that we had a copy, of course we went to the stacks immediately, to check if it was really there - and it was. We were flabbergasted, to say the least," concludes Kristian Knutsson.
