Johannes Kepler was a mathematician who discovered the three laws of planetary motion, he also worked in optics, found two new regular polyhedra, showed proof of how logarithms worked, and found volumes of solids using methods he created, finally he contributed to the development of calculus (Field n.pag). Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, as a premature child (Michael Fowler n.pag). He was born in a small town called, Weil der Stadt, Swabia, which is now Germany. He was the first child of Heinrich Kepler and Katharina Guldenmann (Johannes Kepler n. pag). His mother was a daughter of an innkeeper and his father was a mercenary soldier. Kepler’s brother, Heinrich, was a soldier and Kepler’s younger brother was a tinsmith. At the age of 5, Kepler’s father left home for the last time, and was thought to …show more content…
His inspiration finally hit him one day while he considered a question such as: “Why are there only six planets? How can their distance from the sun be determined? How can the planets farthest from the sun move the slowest” (Johannes Kepler n. pag)? He presumed that the questions could be answered by relating their placement and movement to the five regular solids of euclid geometry (Johannes Kepler n. page). In 1596, Kepler had his first major publication, Mysterium cosmographic. His results of the questions from earlier resulted to this publication. The publication describes a mathematical relationship between a planet's distance from the sun and it orbits periodically. This fascinating beginning was to develop Kepler’s laws of planetary motion (Johannes Kepler n. pag). Kepler married twice, 1597 and 1613 (Barker n. pag). His first wife died in 1611 (Johannes Kepler n. pag). Kepler was a loyal father who suffered deeply after losing many of his children at an early age. He used mathematical research as a way of comfort, to get his mind off of everything that has been bothering or upsetting