The astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is one of the founders of modern astronomy. Among other accomplishments, he identified three laws that describe planetary motion.

Kepler was born in a small German town and was educated in a church-school. He had a strife-filled family life. His great-aunt on his mother’s side had been accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Kepler was born premature, and contracted smallpox as a small child, which left him with bad vision and semi-crippled hands. His father, a mercenary, may have died in a war in the Netherlands when Kepler was about five—in any case, he never came home. His mother was an amateur apothecary/healer/herablist—which would later be an issue.

Professionally, Kepler was a product of his times. He was an early advocate of Copernican’s sun-centered theory, but also an astrologer-in-chief to the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II of Prague.

This was a time when most people believed that astronomy and astrology were closely intertwined. It was a time when most people also believed in witches and ogres and demons. How else to explain the all-too-common deaths of children (Kepler himself lost many of his own children to disease), or the sudden sicknesses of cattle?

Kepler’s own mother, at age 70, gave someone an herbal remedy that made that person sick—and was arrested for witchcraft. Kepler battled her accusers from 1615 to 1621, when he at last secured her release. She died soon after.