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JOHANNES KEPLER

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Bianca
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« Reply #30 on: October 25, 2008, 12:52:57 pm »










Kepler's Background



Johannes Kepler was born on 6th January 1572 (NS) at Weil-der-Stadt in the German province of Swabia. His grandfather had been mayor of the town but the Kepler family fortunes were in decline. His father was a bullying adventurer who earned a precarious living as a mercenary soldier and deserted the family when Johannes was 17. His mother, an inn-keeper's daughter, had a reputation for witchcraft.

Born prematurely, Johannes was weak and sickly. He spent a solitary, unhappy childhood, but at least he was fortunate in that the ruling Dukes of Württemburg had created a relatively enlightened system of education in Swabia. With a view to recruiting the brightest minds for the Protestant clergy, a system of grants and scholarships was available to promising (male) children of poor families, and despite his ill health, Johannes was precociously brilliant.

His schooldays, though academically successful, were thoroughly miserable. His know-all cleverness irritated his classmates, who frequently beat him up. He considered himself physically repulsive (admitting to 'a dog-like horror of baths'), thoroughly unlikeable, an outsider. He turned to the world of ideas for escape and found solace in an abiding religious conviction.

In 1587 Kepler went to Tübingen University where he proved to be an excellent mathematician. He also became an advocate of the controversial Copernican theory of the solar system, which he often defended in public debates. At that time Kepler was not particularly interested in astronomy. The idea of a Sun-centred universe had a mystical appeal. He intended to become a clergyman and when he graduated in 1591 he entered the Tübingen faculty of theology. Before taking his final examinations, however, he was recommended for the vacant post of teacher of mathematics and astronomy at the Protestant school at Graz in Austria, which he took up in April 1594, aged 23. There were no clear distinctions between astronomy and astrology; amongst his duties as 'mathematicus' Kepler was expected to issue an annual almanac of astrological predictions. In his first almanac he predicted an exceptionally cold winter and a Turkish incursion into Austria. When both predictions proved correct, he unexpectedly gained a reputation as a prophet.
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Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
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