Famous Mathematicians: Johannes Kepler

Jan 22, 2020 | Hinsdale

From Nasa's very own website, here is: 

A List of Kepler's Firsts

  • First to correctly explain planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first "natural laws" in the modern sense; being universal, verifiable, precise.
  • In his book Astronomia Pars Optica, for which he earned the title of founder of modern optics he was the:
  • First to investigate the formation of pictures with a pin hole camera;
  • First to explain the process of vision by refraction within the eye;
  • First to formulate eyeglass designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness;
  • First to explain the use of both eyes for depth perception.
  • In his book Dioptrice (a term coined by Kepler and still used today) he was the:
  • First to describe: real, virtual, upright and inverted images and magnification;
  • First to explain the principles of how a telescope works;
  • First to discover and describe the properties of total internal reflection.
  • In addition:
  • His book Stereometrica Doliorum formed the basis of integral calculus.
  • First to explain that the tides are caused by the Moon (Galileo reproved him for this).
  • Tried to use stellar parallax caused by the Earth's orbit to measure the distance to the stars; the same principle as depth perception. Today this branch of research is called astrometry.
  • First to suggest that the Sun rotates about its axis in Astronomia Nova
  • First to derive the birth year of Christ, that is now universally accepted.
  • First to derive logarithms purely based on mathematics, independent of Napier's tables published in 1614.
  • He coined the word "satellite" in his pamphlet Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor Iovis sattelitibus erronibus