[Ologn]

On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was not published until a month before Copernicus died.

On the Origin of Species was not published until 1859 - Darwin had the basic ideas down in 1839, but did not start thinking to publish until Alfred Russel Wallace started to publish in the mid/late 1850s, which is probably what pushed him into finally publishing. Also, Darwin only alluded to humans in the work, and didn't publish the Descent of Man until 1871.

[droctothorpe]

Thanks for sharing these examples. I feel like stories like this, collectively, could constitute an interesting book.