Johannes Kepler

By Illa Vij

Sixteenth century genius Johannes Kepler had declared, "We must build a ship to sail the oceans of space in the Universe". It’s amazing that he said this over 350 years ago. He was born in Weil der stadt, Germany, on December 27, 1571. At the age of four years, Kepler suffered an attack of small pox. One of his hands was deformed and his eyesight permanently impaired. His education was interrupted when his father lost all his money. Kepler had to become an errand boy and scrub floors.

At the age of 13, Kepler was sent to a monastery school in Adelberg, where his brilliance won him scholarship at the University of Tubingen. He joined a course in astronomy. When he read the revolutionary theory of great astronomer Nicolaus, stating that the earth revolves around the sun, his interest in astronomy become even more intense. At the age of 23, Kepler, became a professor of mathematics in Austria. He was a popular teacher and greatly inspired his students. He married a young widow who had both beauty and money.

Kepler advanced reasons to prove how the moon caused the tides. He wrote a book titled Mysterious Cosmos. This book also led to his friendship with the Danish genius and well-known astronomer, Tycho Brahe, at Prague. He tried to calculate the motions of the planets, presuming that their orbits were in a circle. He did not succeed, and consulted, Tycho Brahe. Kepler became his assistant, but Tycho did not believe in the Copernican system.

Tycho was also a great astronomer. For 20 years, he made observations with his giant quadrant (the telescope was invented in 1609). He made numerous accurate

observations. Tychos lent Kepler his incomplete planetary tables which enabled the latter to work out his three great laws of planetary motion. These laws nullified the old Ptolemaic theory of the earth as the centre of the universe. It confirmed Copernicus’s belief and gave way and direction to the era of modern astronomy. This genius had to toil for long, unending hours as even the slightest of errors could waste a week’s hard work. He lived with meagre resources and at times no food was cooked in the house, due to a lack of money for buying wood. When Tycho died, Kepler succeeded his position at Rudolph’s Court, but the Emperor did not pay him the salary that he had promised. He was more interested in Kepler’s skill as an astrologer than as an astronomer. Kepler wrote the book New Astronomy, but it attracted little attention and the genius continued to live in poverty.

In 1612, Kepler lost his second son and his wife. The Emperor, who was his patron, died too. Now Kepler was compelled to take up a teaching job in Linz. His new job did not give him enough money, but he got the time for regular observation with a borrowed telescope. Kepler believed that there might be life on the planets, and when he observed them through the telescope, he made a statement about building a ship to sail into space.

Kepler remarried in Linz.Unfortunately, his mother was charged with practising witchcraft and jailed in a village in Wurttemberg. Kepler had to put in months of work to get her acquitted. Around this time he wrote his third great book, The Harmony of the World. The church suppressed his writings and in 1926, Linz was besieged. The religious authorities put Kepler under a rigid watch as they suspected him to be a heretic. They even sealed his library. One icy cold, rainy night, Kepler fled from Linz. At Ulm on the Danube, Kepler completed the calculations for Tychos’s 777 stars and added 228 observations of his own. The Rudolphine Tables were finally printed, giving all credit to Tycho. Recognising this work, Emperor Ferdinand II granted Kepler a small pension and a home in Sagan, Silesia.

On November 15, 1630, Kepler died of fever. As a scientist, Johannes Kepler lived through hardships but with his strong will he smoothened his way to success. His life was plagued by war and many personal crises, yet this giant of science, set a path for man to step on to and walk towards the stars.