Robert Stawell Ball

Great Astronomers Robert Stawell Ball

Kepler was born on the 27th December, 1571, at Weil, in the Duchy of Würtemberg.[2] It would seem that the circumstances of his childbood must have been singularly-unhappy. His father, sprung from a well-connected family, was but a shiftless and idle adventurer; nor was the great astronomer much more fortunate in his other parent. His mother was an ignorant and ill-tempered woman; indeed, the ill-assorted union came to an abrupt end through the desertion of the wife by her husband when their eldest son Johannes, the hero of our present sketch, was eighteen years old. The childhood of this lad, destined for such fame, was still further embittered by the circumstance that when he was four years old he had a severe attack of small-pox. Not only was his eyesight permanently injured, but even his constitution appears to have been much weakened by this terrible malady. It seems, however, that the bodily infirmities of young Johannes Kepler were the immediate cause of his attention being directed to the pursuit of knowledge. Had the boy been fitted like other boys for ordinary manual work, there can be hardly any doubt that to manual work his life must have been devoted. But, though his body was feeble, he soon gave indications of the possession of considerable mental power. It was accordingly thought that a suitable sphere for his talents might be found in the Church, which, in those days, was almost the only profession that afforded an opening for an intellectual career. We thus find that by the time Johannes Kepler was seventeen years old he had attained a sufficient standard of knowledge to entitle him to admission on the foundation of the University at Tübingen