Johannes Kepler's Accomplishments

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Johannes Kepler, a famous mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer, was born on December 27, 1571 in the small town of Weil der Stadt in Germany. He was a big part of the 17th century scientific revolution. He was a very religious man and can be described as innovative and someone that could brighten social meetings with his bright and enlightening ideas. Kepler made huge contributions to how we interpret and study the solar system today. One of his most well-known discoveries is his laws of planetary motion. These laws are still used today to study how the planets and our solar system functions. Something interesting about Johannes Kepler is that he was one of the first people to talk about the moon's effect on tides. As a matter of fact, …show more content…

However, by the time that Kepler was born their wealth had decreased drastically. When Kepler was young his father was killed in war, so his mother was is primary caregiver. He even had to be taken out of school as a boy to work as a waiter at an inn to make money for his family. Kepler's mother was a herbalist and was later suspected for witchcraft. When he was young, Kepler had a severe case of smallpox which left his hand crippled and his vision limited. After finishing schooling at Latin and grammar school, he began his studies of theology and science at the University of Tubingen. It was there when he was introduced to the ideas of Copernicus and took interest in them, and he began to be more intrigued in the field of science. One major influence in Johannes’s life is God; He said he believed the path he was taking was the path God wanted him to be on, and that God was guiding him along in his journey. Kepler said that “God guided him to the study of the stars” and that “his vocation is a religious …show more content…

Then, he married to a woman named Barbara Muller who had been widowed two times and had already had a daughter in one of her previous marriages. They eventually ended up having three children together, but two of them passed away as infants. Later, Barbara's health became grim and she eventually died in 1612 of Hungarian fever. One year after Muller death, Kepler remarried to a young woman named Susanne Pettinger who was twenty-four years old at the time. They also had three children, but all three of them died as infants. The cause of this death was probably the resources, or lack thereof, offered at that time. The scientific revolution had not yet happened, so a lot of medicines had not been developed yet. With that said, numerous people died from illness and childbirth. The deaths in his life was heavy burden for Kepler to carry. But beside the hardship in his life, Johnnes Kepler had many accomplishments in his life including: being appointed as imperial mathematician and advisor to Emperor Rudolph ll, published “Astronomiae Pars Optica”, published “Astronomia Nova”, published “Epitome of Copernican Astronomy”, competed Rudolphine Tables. Another huge accomplishment Kepler had was discovering the laws of planetary motion. The first law was that all planets traveled in “stretched out circles” or ellipses. For the second law, Kepler determined that an invisible line that connected the sun