Scientist of the day -Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler  (1571 - 1630)

Johannes Kepler was a key player in a profound change in the tide of human thought: the scientific revolution. In Kepler’s lifetime:

Kepler reflected the times he lived in. Seen through modern eyes, he had somewhat contradictory ideas. He was:

Such contradictions were not unusual during the scientific revolution. Isaac Newton, who lived in a later time than Kepler (1643 to 1727) did not work in the way a modern scientist would. Also a Protestant with unorthodox views, Newton spent more time investigating the true meaning of the Bible’s words and on the pseudoscience of alchemy than he did on mathematics or physics!

Johannes Kepler’s Early Life and Education

Johannes Kepler was born on December 27, 1571, in the town of Weil der Stadt, which then lay in the Holy Roman Empire, and is now in Germany.

When Johannes was about five years old, his father, Heinrich Kepler, was killed in Holland fighting as a mercenary. His mother, Katharina Guldenmann, was a herbalist who helped run an inn owned by her father.

Kepler’s First Law – The Law of Orbits
Kepler tried to figure out the mathematical shape of Mars’s orbit. After about 40 misses, in 1605, he got it right. Mars follows an elliptical path around the sun.

And now he formulated what would become Kepler’s first law: planets orbit the sun in ellipses, with the sun at one focus.

Kepler’s Third Law – The Law of Periods
Kepler never gave up his idea that regular polygons determine the orbits of the planets. As a fortunate result of this wrong thinking, he continued calculating and theorizing.

In 1618 his continuing research led to his third law of planetary motion:

The square of the period of any planet is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its orbit.

Restated crudely, this law means that if we square the time it takes a planet to complete one orbit around the sun, we’ll find it’s proportional to the planet’s distance from the sun cubed.

Even more crudely: the farther a planet is from the sun, the slower it moves along its orbital path.

The End

Johannes Kepler died after falling ill at the age of 58, on November 15, 1630 in the German city of Regensburg. He was survived by a son and a daughter from his first marriage, to Barbara Müller, who died rather young. He was also survived by his second wife, Susanna Reuttinger, and two sons and a daughter from that marriage.

Scientist of the day - Pierre Curie

Pierre Curie

Pierre Curie was a French physical chemist who discovered radium and polonium, while studying radioactivity with his wife, Marie Curie. Widely considered to be one of the founders of founders of modern physics, he pioneered the fields of crystallography, magnetism and piezoelectricity. Curie shared the 1903 the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife for their work on radiation.

Early Life and Education:

Born in Paris, France on May 15, 1859, Pierre Curie was a childhood prodigy. He showed an extraordinary aptitude for mathematics and geometry. Curie completed the equivalent of a higher degree when he was only 18, but failed to pursue a doctorate due to some financial problems. He instead accepted a job as a laboratory instructor.

Contributions and Achievements:

Pierre Curie is widely credited to be one of the founders of modern physics. As a young researcher, his work had already brought important discoveries related to heat waves, crystals, magnetism and symmetry. He formulated the Curie’s law before he married Marie Sklowdowska in 1895. The Curies, the husband and wife, together discovered polonium and radium while conducting research in radioactivity.

Together with Henri Becquerel, the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics for their revolutionary work on radioactivity.

Later Life and Death:

Pierre Curie died in a street accident in Paris on 19 April 1906. He was only 46 years old.