KEPLER

I was born at 2:30 PM on December 27, 1571, in Weil der Stadt, Wüttemburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, ofGerman Nationality. I was a premature child. The pregnancy lasted 224 days, 9 hours and 53 minutes. I wasendowed at birth with the gift of genius while the rest of my brothers and sisters suffered from severemental and physical handicaps. I was not entirely immune to the family curse of physical infirmity, for Iam bow-legged, frequently covered with large boils, and suffer from congenital myopia and multiple vision.Its a pisser.
My father, Heinrich, was a mercenary soldier and an itinerant criminal who repeatedly abandoned hisfamily. He was a vicious thug and awreckless bully, at one point he was nearly hanged for an alleged crime. Indeed, One of my younger brothers was forced to run away from home when my fatherthreatened to sell him. As a child, whilst serving at my grandfather's inn, i often impressed travellers with my phenomenalmathematical faculty.
My schooldays, though academically successful, were thoroughly miserable. My know-all cleverness irritatedmy classmates and they frequently beat me up. I considered myself physically repulsive and note the dog-like nature of both my appearance and personality, morally i was the worst among mycontemporaries. i admit to having a dog-like horror of baths, i am thoroughly unlikeable and an outsider.
My evident intelligence earned me a scholarship to the University of Tübingen to study for the Lutheranministry. There i was introduced to the ideas of Copernicus and delighted in them. At Tbingen, a bastionof Lutheran orthodoxy, i was taught astronomy by one of the leading astronomers of the day, MichaelMaestlin. i studied not only the four mathematical sciences: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. but also Greek and Hebrew which were both necessary for reading the scriptures in their originallanguages. Teaching was in Latin and at the end of my first year i got 'A's for everything exceptmathematics. So, at age 23, i became a teacher of Mathermatics in Graz, where i wrote the first outspoken defense of the Copernicansystem, the Mysterium Cosmographicum
My family was Lutheran and adhered to the Augsburg Confession, a defining documentfor Lutheranism. However, i did not adhere to the Lutheran position on the real presence and refused tosign the Formula of Concord. Because of my refusal i was excluded from the sacrament in the Lutheranchurch. This and my refusal to convert to Catholicism left me alienated by both the Lutherans and theCatholics. Thus i had no refuge during the Thirty-Years War. What a frigging nightmare.
I was forced to leave my teaching job and to movearound because of the Thirty-Years War. And soon after, my wife and two sons died of hungarian fever. I married again, this time to Susanna and fathered a further eleven children. and then my next two infant children also passedaway.In 1620, it was decreed that my mother be interrogated and torchered because of alegations of witchcraft. But the old woman refused toconfess anything, even in that precarious situation. She was released, but was unable to go home, as thetownspeople threatened to lynch her. She died six months later.Which did my head right in. So i turned to the world of ideas for escape and found solace in my abidingreligious conviction. I know !
On January one, 1600, i began the new century by setting off for Prague. to work for the famous astronomerTycho Brahe. i was furious at being kept from his amassed astronmical observaitonal data of the paths ofthe plannets. He died soon after, ahem, and i was appointed Imperial Mathematician to Emporor rudolf ll, in hisplace, a post i retained through the reigns of three Habsburg Emperors, from November 1601 to 1630. My greatest works and discoveries happend over this period, while i produced Astrological charts for the Emperor. But the publication of the Tabulae Rudolphinae marked the beginning of the end for me. During the publicationprocess i left Linz forever, thanks to increasing religious persecution and a series of peasant revolts.Life there had become intolerable. The Imperial treasury owed me 20,000 florins by the end of my career and I had always considered myself a nomad in exile. I now began my finalwanderings. Left with no money or home to return to, i traveled aimlessly around the region.
i died in lonely poverty in Regensburg on the 15th of November 1630, after a life of continuing illness. iwas staying in the city on my way to collect some money owed to me in connection with the RudolphineTables. i was buried in the localchurch, but this was destroyed in the course of the Thirty Years' War and nothing remains of my tomb.
I am chiefly remembered for discovering the three laws of planetary motion. My love of philosophy, astrology, mysticism, religion, and my passion for divine aesthetics of the universe made me one of the last great astronomers of the past. My devotion to accuracy, my endless questioning and my unification of astronomy and physics marked me as the first great astronomer of the modern era. And my unlikely appearance on myspace shows me to be a dead forward thinking Astronomer of the future.
Iproposed to consider the actual paths of the planets, not the circles used to construct them. I continued to express my non othodox attituderegarding god, the heavens and natural philosophy. and as a result, I was continuallyharrassed and exiled by the might of the catholic church. my outspoken opinions offered a convenient out for scholars who wanted to use the Copernican system butfeared the wrath of the Church should they try claim that the earth was actually revolving around the sun. i robustly denounced the geocentric astronomy, where it was assumed that the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun,Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - moved round the Earth.
Look, I discovered that the distance a planet is from the sun, cubed, is directly proportional to the time it takes to complete the orbit, squared. I insist that the sun emanated a force that caused the planets to revolve around it.i did important work in optics, i discovered two new regular polyhedra, i gave the first mathematicaltreatment of close packing of equal spheres. i gave the first proof of how logarithms worked and devised a method of finding the volumes of solids ofrevolution that contribute to the development of calculus. And i calculated the most exact astronomicaltables hitherto known. Cripes, I even explicated the meaning of the new star of 1604 as the conversion of America, downfall of Islam andreturn of Christ. yeeehaaaaarrrr!
I am convinced that God has made the Universe according to a mathematical plan. I believe that the five regular solids determined the layout of the known universe my book Stereometrica Doliorum formed the basis of integral calculus. I am the last true astrologer and the first true astronomer. I believe that astronomers are the new priests of the deity, deciphering the Book of Nature according tothe Divine Harmony of the spheres. God is in the sun, so is in our souls and is the source of ourintelligence. JK2006