Heliocentrism

I'm not sure it's true to say that Copernicus showed that the Earth rotates around the Sun. In his time (1473–1543) it was very much a theory. Kepler (1571–1630) correctly explained the nature of planetary motion, including their elliptical orbits; and the ideas of these two were supported by observations made through telescopes by Galileo (1564–1642).

The work done by Isaac Newton (1642–1727) placed heliocentrism on what Wikipedia calls "a firm theoretical foundation", but by the time of William Herschel (1738–1822) astronomers had begun to realise that even the Sun was not in fact the centre of the Universe but was essentially the same as all of the other stars.