Johannes Kepler, (Born December 27, 1571, Weil der Stadt, Württemberg [Germany]—Died November 15, 1630, Regensburg)
By Michael Hale
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“I used to measure the heavens, now I shall measure the shadows of the earth. Although my soul was from heaven, the shadow of my body lies here.” Johannes Kepler
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Kepler came from a poor family in a small German town called Weil der Stadt and was a recipient scholarship that it made possible to attendance at the University of Tübingen, where he began his university studies in 1589.
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In the late 16th century there was no “scientific community” and a lot of the tools used for observation of the stars had not even been created. But Kepler was able to make use of a matrix of theological, astrological, and physical ideas to form theory’s that have yet been able to disprove. It said he had direct impact and influence on other great philosophers like Newton, Galileo and Descartes.
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(1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus
(2) the time necessary to traverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proportional to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc (the “area law”) -
(3) there is an exact relationship between the central body and that arc (the “area law”); and (3) there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits (the “harmonic law”).
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