1596 AD GERMANY JOHANNES KEPLER PLATONIC UNIVERSE

The nested-solids diagram from Johannes Kepler's Mysterium Cosmographicum, printed at Tubingen in 1596: the five Platonic solids fitted between the spheres of the six known planets, so that each solid touches the spheres on either side of it. Kepler had the idea while lecturing on a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on 19 July 1595, and the book stands as an early public defence of Copernican heliocentrism built on the conviction that geometry underlay the structure God gave the universe.

The card

• Date — 1,596 AD
• Where — Tubingen, Germany. 48.5216, 9.0576 — site
• Evidence grade — WEB-PHOTO

Sources

• thinking3d.ac.uk

Works Cited

• Source, Title, Publisher, Year.