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Laws of planetary motion
 Kepler's Firsts
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A List of Kepler's Firsts

• First to correctly explain planetary motion, thereby, becoming founder of celestial mechanics and the first "natural laws" in the modern sense; being universal, verifiable, precise.

In his book Astronomia Pars Optica, for which he earned the title of founder of modern optics he was the:

• First to investigate the formation of pictures with a pin hole camera;
• First to explain the process of vision by refraction within the eye;
• First to formulate eyeglass designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness;
• First to explain the use of both eyes for depth perception.

In his book Dioptrice (a term coined by Kepler and still used today) he was the:

• First to describe: real, virtual, upright and inverted images and magnification;
• First to explain the principles of how a telescope works;
• First to discover and describe the properties of total internal reflection.

In addition:

• His book Stereometrica Doliorum formed the basis of integral calculus.
• First to explain that the tides are caused by the Moon (Galileo reproved him for this).
• Tried to use stellar parallax caused by the Earth's orbit to measure the distance to the stars; the same principle as depth perception. Today this branch of research is called astrometry.
• First to suggest that the Sun rotates about its axis in Astronomia Nova
• First to derive the birth year of Christ, that is now universally accepted.
• First to derive logarithms purely based on mathematics, independent of Napier's tables published in 1614.
• He coined the word "satellite" in his pamphlet Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor Iovis sattelitibus erronibus us vector is

This law he published in 1619 in his Harmonices Mundi . It was this law, not an apple, that lead Newton to his law of gravitation. Kepler can truly be called the founder of celestial mechanics.