KEPLER—EARLY ASTRONOMER WHO EVEN TODAY SHAPES OUR VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE

First came Copernicus (1473-1543), then Galileo (1564-1642), and then maybe the most innovative of them all…Johannes Kepler (1571-1630).  To give you a fix on the historic time frame, William Shakespeare lived at this time as well. It was a time of great stirring in artistic and scientific areas. All of this despite the rantings and persecutions of the religious leaders. They were all against most innovative theories and ideas.

Kepler was so very different than anyone else. For instance some of his advances included: First to correctly explain planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first "natural laws" in the modern sense; being universal, verifiable, precise.
First to investigate the formation of pictures with a pin hole camera; First to explain the process of vision by refraction within the eye; First to formulate eyeglass designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness; First to explain the use of both eyes for depth perception. First to explain the principles of how a telescope works;
First to explain that the tides are caused by the Moon (Galileo reproved him for this). Tried to use stellar parallax caused by the Earth's orbit to measure the distance to the stars; the same principle as depth perception. Today this branch of research is called astrometry. First to suggest that the Sun rotates about its axis in Astronomia Nova

First to derive the birth year of Christ, that is now universally accepted.

First to derive logarithms purely based on mathematics, independent of Napier's tables published in 1614. He coined the word "satellite" in his pamphlet. He even contributed to Newton’s famous laws of gravity because of the falling apple.

For all of our satellites, computers and scientific developments and discoveries —Kepler was centuries ahead of his time. Even today many are discovering new meanings and understandings of his genius.