LON-CAPA Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the oldest of seven children born to Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammanati. He entered the University of Pisa in 1581 to study medicine. Soon he realized that his interests were not in medicine, but mathematics. After only a year in the university, he made his famous discovery of the isochronal movement of pendulums.

He then continued an independent study of science and mathematics while trying to convince his father to allow him to study science and math. In 1586 Galileo withdrew from the University of Pisa without a degree and headed back to live with his family. For the next few years he continued his study of science and gave a series of lectures on the Inferno of Dante's The Divine Comedy at the Florentine Academy. Galileo had many influential friends who were able to help him gain an appointment as a lecturer of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1859 and then as the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua in 1592.

Galileo Galilei's accomplishments

1597

Constructed a military compass. Brought him acclaim and a substantial income.
1609: Built a "telescope" (although he was not the first to do so.) This enabled him to:
1. see craters on the moon, which was previously thought to be a smooth sphere.
2. discover four moons around Jupiter. The only planet believed to have a moon was the Earth
3. observe Venus shows phases (just like the moon of the Earth.)
1610: Published the findings above in a book called Sidereus Nuncius (The Sidereal Messenger). These findings were strong evidence supporting heliocentrism (Sun-centered universe) which was, at the time, against the teachings of the Bible and the Catholic Church. Galileo was then warned by the church not to teach heliocentrism as fact, only as a theory.
1623: After the appearance of three new comets in 1618, Galileo published a short work entitled Saggiatore (The Assayer) in which he supported heliocentrism and free scientific inquiry
1632: The climax of Galileo's publishing was the book, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, tolemaico copernicano (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican.) The intent of the book was to present an "inconclusive" conversation between three individuals regarding the geocentric (Ptolemaic) and heliocentric (Copernican) models of the universe. Throughout the book, however, the person defending the Ptolemaic view presented himself as a fool. For defying the warning of the Catholic Church Galileo was forced to recant and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Page created by: Mike Cowen

References

Drake, S. 1983, Telescopes, Tides and Tactics. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Wallace, W.A., 1992 Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof., Kliwer Academic Publishers.

Other world wide web sites about Galileo Galilei :

http://galileo.imss.firinze.it/museo/

http://es.rice.edu:80/ES/humsoc/Galileo/

http:// muse.tau.ac.il/~museum/

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