Lecture 15: The Watershed - Tycho and Kepler
In the generation following Copernicus, the question of planetary\nmotions was picked up by two remarkable astronomers: Tycho Brahe and\nJohannes Kepler. Tycho was a Danish nobleman and brilliant astronomer\nand instrument builder whose high precision naked-eye measurements of\nthe stars and planets were to be the summit of pre-telescopic astronomy.\nKepler was the talented German mathematician who was hired by Tycho and\nsucceeded him after his death who was to use Tycho's data to derive his\nthree laws of planetary motion. These laws swept away the vast complex\nmachinery of epicycles, and provide a geometric description of planetary\nmotions that was to set the stage for their eventual physical\nexplanation by Isaac Newton a generation later. Recorded 2007 Oct 10 in\n1000 McPherson Lab on the Columbus campus of The Ohio State University.