Johannes Kepler

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Johannes Kepler

A 1610 portait of Kepler by an unknown artist
Born December 27 1571
Weil der Stadt near Stuttgart, Germany
Died November 15 1630
Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Monument of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler in Prague
Monument of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler in Prague

Johannes Kepler (lived December 27, 1571November 15, 1630) was a German astronomer. He was Tycho Brahe's apprentice, or person who learns a trade from another person. He looked at the solar system and discovered three laws about how it works. The first was that the orbits, or paths, of planets are "ellipses", or flattened ovals that really have two "centers". The second was that if there was a line between a planet and the Sun, the line would sweep an equal area in equal amounts of time. The third was that if a person multiplied the time it took for a planet to go around the Sun by itself, that person would get the distance of a planet to the Sun multiplied by itself twice.

Contents

[edit] Writings by Kepler

  • Mysterium cosmographicum (The Sacred Mystery of the Cosmos) (1596)
  • Astronomia nova (New Astronomy) (1609)
  • Epitome astronomiae Copernicanae (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy) (published in three parts from 1618-1621)
  • Harmonice Mundi (Harmony of the Worlds) (1619)
  • Mysterium cosmographicum (The Sacred Mystery of the Cosmos) 2nd Edition (1621)
  • Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Tables) (1627)
  • Somnium (The Dream) (1634)

[edit] See also

  • Kepler's laws of planetary motion
  • Keplerian problem
  • Kepler conjecture
  • Heliocentrism
  • Scientific revolution

[edit] Notes and references

  • The most authoritative biography of Kepler is Max Caspar's Kepler. Though there are a number of more recent biographies, most are based on Caspar's work with minimal original research; much of the information cited from Caspar can also be found in the books by Arthur Koestler, Kitty Ferguson, and James A. Connor. Kepler's mathematics and cosmological views have been extensively analyzed in books and journal articles, though his astrological work—and its relationship to his astronomy—remains understudied.

[edit] External links

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