These guys.

 Johannas Keppler was a scientist as are these guys: Galileo and Copernicus. I always get into these weird places trying to remember people's renown, was Galileo the Great and these were the lesser? Didn't they all kind of do the same things? But wasn't it Galileo who was died in the year Newton was born? Do men get marked by the Gods?

I was able to become interested in Galileo by his reputation, but today I was reading an article about Johannas Keppler, and I was intrigued by a line that said something to the effect of "Keppler was perhaps the greatest scientist ever to live", either it is boldness on the part of the writer, or there is truth there which must be explored, no one writes songs about Keppler. 

Is Keppler the first to develop the idea of gravity? What a phenomenal thing to have done. The idea of casting my eye toward the heavens had never occurred to me, even though I have been interested in science. I have been looking up lately. 

So, what was it that Galileo did? Why, he heard of a device for seeing things at great distances as though close, and he saw with his device the three satellites of Jupiter. He made, with his observations, calculations about the movements of the planets and he wrote on them, defending the following man's position. His observations were in his time a miracle too large to be taken in by his contemporaries. I guess that's just how that is sometimes. 

Copernicus was famous for coming up with, again, a model of the universe which put the sun at the center of it. Of course, he did this, according to the experts, after but independent of the Greek who said the very same thing some 1800 years prior. This Greek was Aristarchus of Samos, and thinking here about 1800 years ago is mind boggling, when did Samos live? Anyway, perhaps there are more things to encounter in these great mysteries. One wishes one could write a very nice and thorough book that tells the complete story of each and in relation to the others, without going all Newton on us, so that we can share Newton with the former ages. These are the discoverers of a great mystery in a most important time. How did we reach this climax, such a mystery that these famous men's stories aren't as well-known as their names.