Johannes Kepler arrived at the University of Tübingen as a 17-year-old scholarship student in 1589. Which of his teachers privately taught him that the Copernican heliocentric system was correct — at a time when the Lutheran consistory's official curriculum required teaching the Ptolemaic geocentric system?
Maestlin was the senior Tübingen astronomer from 1583 to 1631. He officially taught the Ptolemaic system in public lectures and in his standard textbook, while privately teaching Copernicus to selected advanced students in tutorial. Kepler's 1596 *Mysterium Cosmographicum* — the first explicit Copernican defence by his generation — was dedicated to Maestlin. Melanchthon was a Lutheran reformer of the previous generation, died 1560. Tycho Brahe never went to Tübingen and was substantively hostile to Copernicus. Galileo was three years younger than Kepler and never taught him.
Read the full story →Michael Maestlin taught mathematics and astronomy at Tübingen from 1583 to 1631. He was the man who privately taught the young Johannes Kepler that the Copernican heliocentric system was probably correct, while officially continuing to teach the Ptolemaic system that the university curriculum required.
Related questions
- What major scientific work was published in 1543, conventionally marking the start of the Scientific Revolution?
- In 1620 the seventy-four-year-old mother of the great astronomer Johannes Kepler was arrested for witchcraft in the Duchy of Württemberg. The trial dragged on for six years. Who served as her lead defence lawyer?
- How long did Johannes Kepler spend defending his mother against witchcraft charges?
- How did the astronomer Tycho Brahe die in October 1601?