The National Library of Ukraine had one of the greatest contributions to human thought, Nicolaus Copernicus's book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), published in 1543. Only four other copies are known to exist in the world. Last week, the National Library's copy was stolen.
In his book, Copernicus crushed the old arguments that the Earth is fixed and at the center of the universe, and that the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn revolved around it. Using mathematics, he argued that the Sun was stationary and that revolving around it were the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth (with the Moon orbiting around it), Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
According to a librarian, at 11 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 12, a man entered the National Library's manuscript department at Volodomyrska 62 and asked for a one-day pass to read at the library. For identification, he produced a militia card. Normally, the requirements to get a pass to the manuscript library are a letter of introduction from an institute of higher education and a passport. But the receptionist, with a natural fear of the police, issued the one-day pass.
The procedure for getting in and out of the manuscript collection is quite stringent. One has to pass through two controls to get into the reading room. First the pass has to be shown to a library assistant, then the pass has to be shown again to a guard, hired from the elite Berkut police service, who also makes sure that no bags or briefcases are taken into the reading room. On leaving, the police guard checks the readers to make sure that no library materials are carried out, as the manuscript library is not for lending, but only for reading.
The man had a notebook and a bottle of water – usually not allowed, the librarian said, but given how hot it was that day an exception was made. He went to the reading room and asked for six books to read, the maximum allowed. One of them was Copernicus's book. This precious book was kept behind a glass case and not given to ordinary visitors. However, the man with the militia ID persuaded the library attendants to let him look at it. He said that he read Latin, and only wanted to translate a few sentences and would soon give it back.
After some time he returned Copernicus's book along with the others and received a receipt to awknowledge the return. He then left the building, and on the way out he showed the receipt to the check-out assistants.
Some time later the suspect returned again to the library and reading room. He once asked for six books including Copernicus's book. Again the book was taken out of its glass case and given to him.
At about 17:20, ten minutes before closing time, he left his desk. At closing time, the librarian noticed the suspect wasn't back, that there were only five books on his table and Copernicus's book's was not among them. The librarian sounded the alarm. But it was too late. The suspect was not in the library.
The man must have passed the check-out showing the receipt that he returned all six books, passed the police guard and left the building with Copernicus's book. But how did he walk past two checks with Copernicus's book? It is a large and thick book, larger than an A4-size page, 400 pages thick and bound in leather.
The police showed up soon after the alarm was sounded. They found the man's water bottle, from which they took fingerprints. But according to the librarian, the police seemed to fail to understand the significance of the loss and took no further measures.
Moreover, the librarian suggested, the National Library staff was so embarrassed by its failure to enforce security rules that they had not told the full story to police.
Mysteriously, the man also left his notebook with a handwritten message: 'This book does not belong here and must not be here.'
