Warsaw - A rare first edition of a ground-breaking book by 16th-century astronomer Nicholas Copernicus has been stolen from a scientific library in southern Poland.
It was the second theft in eastern Europe this year of a copy of De Revolutionibus, a 1543 work in which Copernicus presented his revolutionary thesis that it was the Earth which revolved around the Sun.
The book, which was estimated by librarians quoted by Polish newspapers at $147,100 to $235,000, but which most experts say is priceless, disappeared from the library of the Polish Academy of Science in Krakow on Tuesday, according to police.