Austrian mathematician and astronomer who got himself taken on as an assistant to Brahe in order to get access to his planetary tables. Kepler had been trained as a Platonist and Neopythagorean, and was given to rather mystical views, as exemplified in his work Mysterium Cosmographicum. Nevertheless, Kepler was also a confirmed Copernican. In fact, he wanted to use Tycho's data to prove the validity of the Copernican theory. He analyzed the vast amount of data upon Brahe's death. From this data, he prepared new planetary tables (called the Rudolphine Tables). At first, he determined the shape of planetary orbits to be ovoid, but rejected this result for aesthetic reasons. Going back over his calculations, he found and corrected an error. The new shape turned out to be an eclipse, which fit well into Kepler's Phytagoras views on nature.
