As a preteen, Galileo began studying at a monastery near Florence and considered becoming a monk; Enlightenment thinkers in Four centuries ago, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei put his liberty and life on the line to convince the religious establishment that the Copernican model of the solar system—in which the Earth and the other planets revolved around the sun—represented physical reality.
Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer known as the father of modern astronomy. He was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun, or the Heliocentric Theory of the universe. Prior to the publication of his major Wilbur and Orville Wright were American inventors and pioneers of aviation. In the Wright brothers achieved the first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight; they surpassed their own milestone two years later when they built and flew the first fully practical Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power.
He invented the first alternating current AC motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology. Alexander Graham Bell, best known for his invention of the telephone, revolutionized communication as we know it. His interest in sound technology was deep-rooted and personal, as both his wife and mother were deaf. After Galileo built his telescope in , he began mounting a body of evidence and openly supporting the Copernican theory that the earth and planets revolve around the sun.
The Copernican theory, however, challenged the doctrine of Aristotle and the established order set by the Catholic Church. In , Galileo wrote a letter to a student to explain how Copernican theory did not contradict Biblical passages, stating that scripture was written from an earthly perspective and implied that science provided a different, more accurate perspective.
The letter was made public and Church Inquisition consultants pronounced Copernican theory heretical. Galileo obeyed the order for seven years, partly to make life easier and partly because he was a devoted Catholic. He allowed Galileo to pursue his work on astronomy and even encouraged him to publish it, on condition it be objective and not advocate Copernican theory. Church reaction was swift, and Galileo was summoned to Rome.
During most of this time, Galileo was treated with respect and never imprisoned. However, in a final attempt to break him, Galileo was threatened with torture, and he finally admitted he had supported Copernican theory, but privately held that his statements were correct. He was convicted of heresy and spent his remaining years under house arrest. Though ordered not to have any visitors nor have any of his works printed outside of Italy, he ignored both. In , a French translation of his study of forces and their effects on matter was published, and a year later, copies of the Dialogue were published in Holland.
By this time, Galileo had become blind and was in poor health. In , it lifted the ban on most works supporting Copernican theory.
It wasn't until that the Vatican dropped its opposition to heliocentrism altogether. In the 20th century, several popes acknowledged the great work of Galileo, and in , Pope John Paul II expressed regret about how the Galileo affair was handled. Galileo died after suffering from a fever and heart palpitations on January 8, , in Arcetri, near Florence, Italy. Galileo's contribution to our understanding of the universe was significant not only for his discoveries, but for the methods he developed and the use of mathematics to prove them.
We strive for accuracy and fairness. However, Galileo argued against Aristotle 's view of astronomy and natural philosophy in three public lectures he gave in connection with the appearance of a New Star now known as ' Kepler 's supernova' in The belief at this time was that of Aristotle , namely that all changes in the heavens had to occur in the lunar region close to the Earth, the realm of the fixed stars being permanent.
Galileo used parallax arguments to prove that the New Star could not be close to the Earth. In a personal letter written to Kepler in , Galileo had stated that he was a Copernican believer in the theories of Copernicus.
However, no public sign of this belief was to appear until many years later. At Padua, Galileo began a long term relationship with Maria Gamba, who was from Venice, but they did not marry perhaps because Galileo felt his financial situation was not good enough.
In their first child Virginia was born, followed by a second daughter Livia in the following year. In their son Vincenzo was born. We mentioned above an error in Galileo's theory of motion as he set it out in De Motu around He was quite mistaken in his belief that the force acting on a body was the relative difference between its specific gravity and that of the substance through which it moved.
Galileo wrote to his friend Paolo Sarpi, a fine mathematician who was consultor to the Venetian government, in and it is clear from his letter that by this time he had realised his mistake. In fact he had returned to work on the theory of motion in and over the following two years, through his study of inclined planes and the pendulum, he had formulated the correct law of falling bodies and had worked out that a projectile follows a parabolic path.
However, these famous results would not be published for another 35 years. In May , Galileo received a letter from Paolo Sarpi telling him about a spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. Galileo wrote in the Starry Messenger Sidereus Nuncius in April :- About ten months ago a report reached my ears that a certain Fleming had constructed a spyglass by means of which visible objects, though very distant from the eye of the observer, were distinctly seen as if nearby. Of this truly remarkable effect several experiences were related, to which some persons believed while other denied them.
A few days later the report was confirmed by a letter I received from a Frenchman in Paris, Jacques Badovere, which caused me to apply myself wholeheartedly to investigate means by which I might arrive at the invention of a similar instrument.
This I did soon afterwards, my basis being the doctrine of refraction. From these reports, and using his own technical skills as a mathematician and as a craftsman, Galileo began to make a series of telescopes whose optical performance was much better than that of the Dutch instrument.
His first telescope was made from available lenses and gave a magnification of about four times. To improve on this Galileo learned how to grind and polish his own lenses and by August he had an instrument with a magnification of around eight or nine.
Galileo immediately saw the commercial and military applications of his telescope which he called a perspicillum for ships at sea. He kept Sarpi informed of his progress and Sarpi arranged a demonstration for the Venetian Senate. They were very impressed and, in return for a large increase in his salary, Galileo gave the sole rights for the manufacture of telescopes to the Venetian Senate.
It seems a particularly good move on his part since he must have known that such rights were meaningless, particularly since he always acknowledged that the telescope was not his invention!
By the end of Galileo had turned his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable discoveries. Swerdlow writes see [ 16 ] :- In about two months, December and January, he made more discoveries that changed the world than anyone has ever made before or since.
The astronomical discoveries he made with his telescopes were described in a short book called the Starry Messenger published in Venice in May This work caused a sensation. Galileo claimed to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way was made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting Jupiter.
These last, with an eye to getting a position in Florence, he quickly named 'the Medicean stars'. The Venetian Senate, perhaps realising that the rights to manufacture telescopes that Galileo had given them were worthless, froze his salary. However he had succeeded in impressing Cosimo and, in June , only a month after his famous little book was published, Galileo resigned his post at Padua and became Chief Mathematician at the University of Pisa without any teaching duties and 'Mathematician and Philosopher' to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
In he visited Rome where he was treated as a leading celebrity; the Collegio Romano put on a grand dinner with speeches to honour Galileo's remarkable discoveries. He was also made a member of the Accademia dei Lincei in fact the sixth member and this was an honour which was especially important to Galileo who signed himself 'Galileo Galilei Linceo' from this time on. While in Rome, and after his return to Florence, Galileo continued to make observations with his telescope. Already in the Starry Messenger he had given rough periods of the four moons of Jupiter, but more precise calculations were certainly not easy since it was difficult to identify from an observation which moon was I, which was II, which III, and which IV.
He made a long series of observations and was able to give accurate periods by At one stage in the calculations he became very puzzled since the data he had recorded seemed inconsistent, but he had forgotten to take into account the motion of the Earth round the sun. Galileo first turned his telescope on Saturn on 25 July and it appeared as three bodies his telescope was not good enough to show the rings but made them appear as lobes on either side of the planet. Continued observations were puzzling indeed to Galileo as the bodies on either side of Saturn vanished when the ring system was edge on.
Also in he discovered that, when seen in the telescope, the planet Venus showed phases like those of the Moon, and therefore must orbit the Sun not the Earth.
This did not enable one to decide between the Copernican system, in which everything goes round the Sun, and that proposed by Tycho Brahe in which everything but the Earth and Moon goes round the Sun which in turn goes round the Earth.
Most astronomers of the time in fact favoured Brahe 's system and indeed distinguishing between the two by experiment was beyond the instruments of the day. However, Galileo knew that all his discoveries were evidence for Copernicanism, although not a proof. In fact it was his theory of falling bodies which was the most significant in this respect, for opponents of a moving Earth argued that if the Earth rotated and a body was dropped from a tower it should fall behind the tower as the Earth rotated while it fell.
Since this was not observed in practice this was taken as strong evidence that the Earth was stationary. However Galileo already knew that a body would fall in the observed manner on a rotating Earth. Other observations made by Galileo included the observation of sunspots. He reported these in Discourse on floating bodies which he published in and more fully in Letters on the sunspots which appeared in Since they had been born outside of marriage, Galileo believed that they themselves should never marry.
Although Galileo put forward many revolutionary correct theories, he was not correct in all cases. In particular when three comets appeared in he became involved in a controversy regarding the nature of comets. He argued that they were close to the Earth and caused by optical refraction.
A serious consequence of this unfortunate argument was that the Jesuits began to see Galileo as a dangerous opponent. Despite his private support for Copernicanism, Galileo tried to avoid controversy by not making public statements on the issue. However he was drawn into the controversy through Castelli who had been appointed to the chair of mathematics in Pisa in Castelli had been a student of Galileo's and he was also a supporter of Copernicus. Castelli defended the Copernican position vigorously and wrote to Galileo afterwards telling him how successful he had been in putting the arguments.
Galileo, less convinced that Castelli had won the argument, wrote Letter to Castelli to him arguing that the Bible had to be interpreted in the light of what science had shown to be true. Galileo had several opponents in Florence and they made sure that a copy of the Letter to Castelli was sent to the Inquisition in Rome.
However, after examining its contents they found little to which they could object. The Catholic Church's most important figure at this time in dealing with interpretations of the Holy Scripture was Cardinal Robert Bellarmine.
He seems at this time to have seen little reason for the Church to be concerned regarding the Copernican theory. The point at issue was whether Copernicus had simply put forward a mathematical theory which enabled the calculation of the positions of the heavenly bodies to be made more simply or whether he was proposing a physical reality. Although Galileo was given life behind bars, his sentence soon was changed to house arrest. Barred from seeing friends or publishing books, he nonetheless received visitors from around Europe, including philosopher Thomas Hobbes and poet John Milton.
That same year, Galileo went totally blind. He died on January 8, , at age After Galileo died, he was buried in a side chapel at the church of Santa Croce in Florence. The items were thought to be lost sometime in the early s.
The purloined vertebra ended up at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught from to
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