Kepler, Johannes

Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630), German astronomer.

Johannes Kepler was the first astronomer openly to uphold the ideas of Nicolas Copernicus.

He was skilled in mathematics and he worked out laws for the movements of the planets around the sun. The first of these said: 'Every planet follows an oval-shaped orbit (path) around the sun, called an ellipse.'

Before this, scientists had taken it for granted that the planets moved in circles.

See Max Caspar Kepler