December 27 is reserved to Johannes Kepler

December 27 is reserved to Johannes Kepler
Born Dec 27, 1571, the German mathematician & astronomer is best known for his three laws describing the motion of the planets. NASA's Kepler mission is named in his honor, tasked with searching for exoplanets in the Milky Way.

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.

Bio:
https://www.nasa.gov/kepler/education/johannes

#history #science #KeplersLaws