Place: Germany Subject : biography, astronomy German astronomer who combined great mathematical skills with patience and an almost mystical sense of universal harmony. He is particularly remembered for what are now known as Kepler's laws of motion. These had a profound influence on Isaac Newton and hence on all modern science. Kepler was also absorbed with the forces that govern the whole universe and he was one of the first and most powerful advocates of Copernican heliocentric (Sun-centred) cosmology. Kepler was born on 27 December 1571 in Weil der Statt near Stuttgart, Germany. He was not a healthy child and since it was apparently thought that he was capable only of a career in the ministry, he was sent for religious training in Leonberg, Adelberg, and Maulbronn. One event that impressed him deeply during his early years was the viewing of the ‘great’ comet of 1577 and his interest in astronomy probably dates from that time. He passed his baccalaureate at the University of Tübingen…