Johannes Kepler's Accomplishments

Astronomers are constantly making discoveries and developing research to help society understand the solar system more deeply. Dating back to the 1500s with Galileo Galilei to current day Neil deGrasse Tyson, each has provided discoveries that shape the world we live in. To put into perspective how large our solar system is, astronomers have been exploring the solar system for thousands of years yet only an estimated four percent of it has been explored. It is for this reason that what astronomers do is so important, there is so much yet to learn and be discovered. Johannes Kepler is a well-known astronomer from the 17th century, he made great discoveries in planetary motion that influenced other revolutionary astronomers like Sir Isaac Newton. Johannes Kepler’s laws on

Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer who made many major contributions to astronomy and influenced many important discoveries from astronomers that followed in his footsteps. To give some background on Kepler, he was born in December of 1571 and died in 1630 after contracting a fever, and he grew up in an era when schooling was under the control of church institutions. The meaning of Johannes is “God is Gracious”, which represents to era and importance of the church during this time (Lawler, 2023). He grew a sick child from a poor family, but despite that, his intelligence earned him a scholarship to the University of Tübingen to start his studies for the Lutheran ministry, as Kepler’s family was Lutheran. During this era, it was expected that boys would get a degree to become ministers, teachers, or state functionaries, but that is not what Kepler had in mind. Throughout Kepler’s life, he was a very religious man and he was convinced that God made the universe with a mathematical plan (Field, 1999). It was at the University of Tübingen that Johannes was introduced to