Tag Archives: astronomer Carl Sagan

today’s birthday: Johannes Kepler (1571)


Johannes Kepler (1571)

Described by famed astronomer Carl Sagan as “the first astrophysicist and the last scientific astrologer,” Johannes Kepler was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. A key figure in the scientific revolution, Kepler derived three famous laws of planetary motion, which, among other things, established that the planets travel around the Sun in elliptical rather than circular orbits. When Kepler was six, his mother, who was later tried for witchcraft, took him to see what phenomenon? More… Discuss