Today , Italianastronomer , physicist and author Galileo Galilei , who lived from 1564 to 1642 , might be most famous for cause beenput on trialfor heresy by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 . That event has amount to symbolize the conflict between adhesion to religious tenet and the intellectual exemption required by scientific discipline .
Galileo ’s trouble with authorities actually stemmed not from his own employment , but from his protagonism of Polish astronomerNicolaus Copernicus’heliocentric theory that thesun , not theEarth , was the target around which the planets revolved . Galileo was push to renounce those views to avoid torment and execution and had to spend the last eld of his life history under house stoppage . Even so , Galileo ultimately acquire the argument . Three - and - a - half centuries by and by , Pope John Paul II gave aspeechin which he not only said that the church ’s persecution of Galileo had been a mistake , but also praise him as a brilliant mind who " much invent the observational method . "
But that hubbub is n’t the most important thing about Galileo , a scientific giant whose discoveries evermore changed man ' view of both the cosmos and the strong-arm humankind in which we hold out , and helped found the elbow room in which modern scientists do science . He also became one of the first celebrity scientist - author , whose 1610 book " Starry Messenger " became a sensation .
" Galileo is an interesting representative of a various Renaissance mind , " explainsPaula Findlen , the Ubaldo PIerotti Professor of Italian history and conscientious objector - theatre director of thePatrick Suppes Center for the account and Philosophy of Scienceat Stanford University , via e-mail . " He loves literature , artistic production and music as well as scientific discipline . He knows how to draw and he surely know how to spell with smoothness . He ’s transfixed with how affair work and visits journeyman to know more . I see him as one of the culminating product of the Renaissance hold up in the age of the Reformation . Yet what he does with his knowledge launches a novel age of science and notice . "
Renaissance Astronomer
Galileo was born in Pisa , Italy in 1564 , one of six or seven children of a player namedVincenzo Galilei , according to Rice University’sGalileo Projectwebsite . In Galileo ’s juvenility , his family move to Florence .
After getting his early education at a monastery , Galileo was sent by his don in 1581 to the University of Pisa , where he was theorize to earn a medical degree , as thisbiographical profiledetails . But Galileo did n’t have much interest in healing the human body . alternatively , he was rum about the world around him , and started physics experiments — some of them challenging the thought of the classic Greek philosopher Aristotle . In 1585 , he left the university without realise a arcdegree , and begin learn mathematics , another of his interests . Eventually , his repute grew so much that in 1589 , he was invited back to the university to lead the mathematics section .
In 1592 , Galileo moved to Venice and guide a better - paying post at the University of Padua , where he spend the next 18 years instruct mathematics and uranology . During that time , he set about a relationship with a woman namedMarina Gamba , with whom he eventually had two daughters and a son .
In 1609 , while still at the university , Galileo hear about a Dutchman who had visit Venice and shown off a novel innovation , thetelescope . Galileo decided to make his own , dear version , and taught himself how to grind lenses to an even higher magnification .
" He was an excellent crafter who show descriptions of the instrumental role and made the most knock-down telescopes at the time , " Alan Hirshfeld writes in an email . He ’s a physics prof and director of the UMass Dartmouth Observatory , and author of the 2014 book " Starlight Detectives : How Astronomers , Inventors , and Eccentrics Discovered the Modern Universe . "
" [ Galileo ] could see what others could not , and therefore his observation were groundbreaking , " Hirshfeld explains .
Perhaps the most crucial of Galileo ’s astronomical discoveries were his revelations about the moon ’s topography , and how its mountains , valley and plains are comparable to those on Earth . " It ’s a material world in space , not some special celestial body made of divine substance , " Hirshfeld read .
Galileo ’s uncovering ofJupiter ’s moonswas another breakthrough . As Hirshfeld explain , he also find that the Moon " keep up with Jupiter as it strike , whether it moves around the Earth or around the sun , depending on one ’s beliefs , but Jupiter ’s moons do not get left behind as critics of Copernicus claimed our moon would if Earth were moving around the sun . Jupiter and its moons render a model of what the solar system is like : small body revolve the magnanimous body . "
Galileo also observed that the Milky Way Galax urceolata consists of stars , most of which are too lightheaded to be seen individually by unassisted human eyes . Thanks to him , humans read that " There are many more stars than antecedently believed , and our cosmos might be far large than we think , " Hirshfeld says .
He also break that the planet Venus hadchanging crescent phases .
" The notice that Venus went through a full Hz of phases , from new to crescent to full and back was all incompatible with the geocentric mannikin of the universe , " saysLarry Marschall , an emeritus professor of physics at Gettysburg College , in an electronic mail . " It could only be explain if Venus buy the farm around the sun in an orbit that was smaller than the Earth ’s orbit around the Dominicus — in other language the Copernican model . "
A Physicist Who Changed Science
Though his astronomical find made him a scientific celebrity , Galileo also made important discoveries in physical science , going back to his early year at the University of Pisa .
For example , Galileo disprove the Greek philosopher Aristotle ’s notion that gravid objects decrease quicker than lighter ones , and showed instead that objects tend to return at the same speed no matter what their weight or shape , which became have it off as thelaw of falling bodies . In legend , Galileo attain this by dropping a cannon and a musket ball from the Leaning Tower of Pisa , thoughmodern historianshave cast doubtfulness upon that story . Galileo alsodiscoveredthat the time take for a pendulum to make out one swing was self-governing of the length of the arc , which led him to produce a design for a pendulum clock .
But his most crucial breakthrough may have been discover the conception ofinertia — that bodies at repose run to stay on at rest — which eventually became the first of thethree laws of motiondescribed by British physicist and mathematicianIsaac Newton .
" Galileo ’s main contribution to physics ( as fight down to astronomy ) was his realization that natural horizontal motion ( a ball rolling on a monotone table ) would be steady motility in a uncoiled line , if you could reduce clash and atmosphere resistance to nothing , and natural vertical apparent motion would be constant acceleration downwards,“Michael Fowler , an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Virginia who has learn acourseon Galileo ’s discovery , drop a line in an e-mail . " But Newton synthesize these observations in his laws , then , brightly , added the police force of gravitational attraction , explaining at one stroke everything from the apple to the solar system . "
In the procedure , Galileo also serve to build the way that today ’s scientists do skill . " He further the paradigm of physical experimentation , precise mensuration and objective observation — ' Let nature verbalize , ' as the saying goes — as oppose to lucid illation base on preconceived notions about nature , " Hirshfeld says . " The lyric of nature , he wrote , is numerical and one must teach to understand that speech . "
