Johannes Kepler

Image may contain: 1 person, beardToday is the birthday of German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who was born in Weil der Stadt in the Holy Roman Empire in 1571. He received a Lutheran education at the University of Tübingen and originally planned to be a theologian. Then one of his teachers gave him a copy of a book by Nicolaus Copernicus, sparking Kepler’s interest in astronomy. In 1600 Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe invited Kepler to Prague to help amass a precise set of astronomical measurements. Brahe died the following year, and Kepler inheritied his mentor’s data and position as imperial mathematician to the Holy Roman emperor. In 1609 Kepler published Astronomia Nova, which included his first two laws of planetary motion; his third law was published in 1619. Kepler observed a supernova (though he called it a “new star”) and completed the detailed astronomical tables Brahe had been so determined to produce. Kepler also contributed research in optics and vision. Later in the century Isaac Newton would prove his law of universal gravitation by showing that it could produce Kepler’s orbits.

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