Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571 in Weil der Stadt, Germany. Kepler's grandfather was supposedly from a noble background, and once Mayor of Weil. However, Kepler's father became a mercenary who narrowly avoided the gallows. Kepler's mother, Katherine, was raised by an aunt who was eventually burned as a witch. In later years, Katherine herself was accused of Devil worship, and barely escaped from being burned at the stake. Kepler had six brothers and sisters, three of which, died in infancy. In his youth, Johannes was described as:"...a sickly child, with thin limbs and a large, pasty face surrounded by dark curly hair. He was born with defective eyesight-myopia plus anocular polyopy (multiple vision). His stomach and gall bladder gave constant trouble; he suffered from boils, rashes, and possibly from piles, for he tells us that he could never sit still for any length of time..." (Koestler, p 24)From this inauspicious start, Johannes Kepler began his fascinating journey as a pioneer in astronomy.Johannes Kepler graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Tuebingen at the age of twenty, intending to matriculate into the Theological Faculty. It was here that Kepler learned and became an adherent of the heliocentric theory of planetary motion, first developed by the Dutch astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. In 1594, Kepler left Tuebingen for the University of Graz to become a professor of astronomy. It was here that Kepler realized that figures of the type shown here determine a definite fixed ratio between the sizes of the two circles, provided the triangle has all sides equal, and a different ratio of sizes will occur for a square between the two circles, another for a regular pentagon, and so on. Kepler believed that this could be used to determine the orbits of planets in the solar system. Unfortunately, Kepler proceeded from a false assumption: namely, that the orbits of the planet were circular. Despite the fa...
