It was reserved for another
astronomer to distil, so to speak, from the volumes in which Tycho's
figures were recorded, the great truths of the universe which those
figures contained. Tycho felt that his work required an interpreter,
and he recognised in the genius of a young man with whom he was
acquainted the agent by whom the world was to be taught some of the
great truths of nature. To the bedside of the great Danish
astronomer the youthful philosopher was summoned, and with his last
breath Tycho besought of him to spare no labour in the performance of
those calculations, by which alone the secrets of the movements of
the heavens could be revealed. The solemn trust thus imposed was
duly accepted, and the man who accepted it bore the immortal name of
Kepler.
Kepler was born on the 27th December, 1571, at Weil, in the Duchy of
Wurtemberg. It would seem that the circumstances of his childhood
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 John, the hero of our
present sketch, was eighteen years old.
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