Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion/Historical Note
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Historical Note
Kepler derived his three laws of planetary motion in the early $1600$s from a concentrated study over the course of $20$ years of the colossal wealth of observational data which had been made previously by Tycho Brahe of the behavior of the planets of the solar system, and in particular Mars.
The first two of these results he published in his gigantic $1609$ work Astronomia Nova.
The third appears some ten years later in his Harmonices Mundi of $1619$.
It was Isaac Newton who managed to interpret these three laws and so work out what is now known as Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, from which Kepler's laws can straightforwardly be derived.
Sources
- 1972: George F. Simmons: Differential Equations ... (previous) ... (next): $\S 3.21$: Newton's Law of Gravitation: Footnote
- 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text {A}.10$: Kepler ($\text {1571}$ – $\text {1630}$)
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Kepler's laws
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Kepler's laws
- 2008: Ian Stewart: Taming the Infinite ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $8$: The System of the World: Kepler