Born on December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Wurttemberg, Germany, Johannes Kepler was the son of a mercenary who helped put down a protestant uprising in the Low Countries. His mother was the daughter of an innkeeper (Kepler Biography). Although he was a sickly child, he proved excellent in his academics (Encyclopedia of World Biography). At the age of five Kepler took the opportunity of watching the Great Comet of 1577 and an eclipse of the moon (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Shortly after that, his father also left never to return (Kepler Biography). Kepler’s curiosity about God and the Christian faith brought …show more content…
In an almanac he created, two of Kepler’s predictions came true, a Turkish invasion and a harsh winter. These events helped establish his reputation and contributed to his marriage to Barbara Muehleck in 1597. Three of their five children died, unfortunately, before becoming adults (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Kepler’s college professor influenced Kepler’s interests in the Copernican system of planetary motion (Johannes Kepler). Nicolaus Copernicus strongly believed that the Earth moved around the Sun but in a circular shape rather than an elliptical shape (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Another Copernicus belief Kepler followed was that the moon is, indeed, not a planet. With the help of Tycho Brahe, Kepler discovered that the planets do move in an elliptical orbit. They had worked as partners, and Kepler discovered this elliptical orbit shortly after Brahe’s death using the information they had gathered together. Johannes Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion are the reasons he is truly remembered (Kepler Biography). The fact that all planets move in an elliptical orbit came to be known as Kepler’s first law …show more content…
In between discovering his second and third laws, Kepler moved, got a job as province mathematician in Linz, Austria, his wife and favorite sun died, and he remarried (Encyclopedia of World Biography). His first wife he seemed to have truly loved, while the second wife he seemed to have only married out of a need for someone to watch the children (Kepler Biography). On top of those problems, he was also successfully defending his mother from charges of which craft in Germany (Johannes Kepler). Kepler continued to work and write just as well, never letting his difficulties throw him off course (Kepler Biography). Kepler developed the Rudolphine Tables and predicted the transit of Venus and Mercury across the sun (Important Facts). He invented logarithms to create these tables, then used the tables in order to predict the transit of Venus and Mercury (Johannes Kepler). He discovered this using some of Brahe’s old data but, unfortunately,