Paragraph on “Why is Johann Kepler so important?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

Why is Johann Kepler so important?

Tycho Brahe first heard of Kepler when he read his book Mystery of the Universe, published in 1596. This supported Copernicus’s theory that the Sun was the centre of the Universe and tried to show how the distances of the planets could be worked out. Brahe was so impressed that he employed him to study the movements the planet Mars and so prove Brahe’s theory of the Universe. It was Kepler’s observations of Mars however, that forced him to realise that neither Brahe nor Copernicus was right, and after many years of hard work, he finally stumbled on the answer — namely that the Earth and all the other planets do indeed move around the Sun, but in elliptical orbits. Whereas a circle has one point at its centre, an ellipse has two points, called foci, inside it — the further apart they are, the more ‘squashed’ the ellipse.