On February 15th, 1564 Galileo Galilei, was born to
Vincenzio Galilei and Guilia Ammannat Galilei in Pisa, the city in Italy
famous for its leaning tower.
This was the same year that William Shakespeare was born;
not bad for a single year.
Galileo's
father, a musician, valued education and the money that a good education
could bring to the family. To prepare him for college, Galileo was
sent to the monastery school at Vallombrosa where he studied
philosophy and religion. At the age of 18, his father pushed him to
enroll in the medical program at the University of Pisa.
After two years of medical training, Galileo finally admitted to himself that
he was not interested in medicine. Galileo had become very interested
in mathematics instead. When his father learned of his dropping out
of the medical program, he made Galileo come to live with him in Florence.
In Florence, Galileo began studying and teaching mathematics privately. He
showed such skill that he was offered a position at the University
of Pisa. However, this did not last long as Galileo had little
respect for the traditions of the school, and his idea that all
objects fell at the same rate regardless of their mass was far too
radical for the liking of the faculty.
In 1592, Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of
Padua. There, ironically, he taught the medical students geometery
and astronomy. You might think this was weird. After all, why does a
medical student need to know astronomy? Well, at the time, doctors
were expected to use astrology to help them diagnose and treat deceases.
They were even supposed to cast horoscopes to decide which is a good time
for preparing medicines.
While he was in Padua, Galileo also met Marina Gamba.
Their 12-year affair would produce 3 children for Galileo. His two
daughters were placed, at a very young age, in a convent where they lived
out the rest of their lives.
In the summer of 1609, Galileo heard about a spy-glass that a Dutchman had
made in Venice. Galileo, using this spy-glass as a starting point,
made a series of telescopes which were much better than the original
instrument. He used these telescopes to make some incredible
discoveries that were published in a book called "Message from the
Stars". In this book, Galileo claimed to have seen mountains and
craters on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny
stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter (Jupiter's
4 largest moons). Now, Galileo was no dummy. He had his eyes on a
better job, and to butter-up his potential employer Ferdinando Medici
he named these four objects 'the Medicean stars'.
It worked. Galileo became 'Mathematician and Philosopher' to Ferdinando,
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, a member of the powerful Medici family.
He continued his
astronomical observations. However, when Galileo began to draw
conclusions about his obsevations, he began to seriously doubt the Catholic
Church's theory of the universe.
Like Copernicus,
Galileo believed his observations told him that objects revolved around
the sun and not the earth. Galileo was not only a great mathmatician but a great
writer who appealed to the common man as well as the learned. He
made many enemies by making his opponents look stupid.
High church officials became concerned and warned Galileo that he was not
to defend the Copernican theory. This warning must not have been very clear
because in 1632, Galileo published a book called "The Dialogue" which
discussed the two theories of planetary motion: Copernicus' theory
that the heavenly bodies revolved around the earth with the sun in
the center and Aristotle's theory that the earth is at the center
of the universe and everything, including the sun, revolved around
it.
Though this book was written as a discussion of both theories, it
clearly held the Copernican system to be true. As a result, Galileo was summoned
to Rome by the Inquisition and found to be guilty of heresy. He was
condemmed to house arrest for life at his villa at Arcetri (near
Florence). He was also forbidden to publish or be in contact with any
learned person. At least he wasn't put to death like many other
people brought before the Inquisition.
Galileo eventually went blind, but he had devoted students and
friends who secretly helped him write up his studies on motion and the
strength of materials. In 1638, his book, "Discourses on Two New
Sciences", was smuggled out of Italy and published in the
Netherlands. Galileo died on January 8, 1642.
