Galileo Galilei

1564-1642

Early Life

  • Born in Pisa, Italy
  • Family were nobles, but not rich
  • Moved to Florence in the 1570s

Academia

  • Attended the University of Pisa
    • Studied the motion of the pendulum
    • Developed the concept of the pendulum clock
  • Disproved the Aristotelian physics model
    • Wrote De Motu on his observations
  • Later became a mathematics teacher at the University of Padua
  • In 1610, he took a position in the Court of the Medici

Discoveries and Inventions

  • All objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum
  • A pendulum's period does not depend on the arc of its swing
  • Mechanical inventions, like an improved pump
  • Most famous invention: the telescope
    • With this, Galileo observed the Sun, the phases of Venus, Jupiter's moons, and Saturn's rings
    • These discoveries led to him concluding that the earth revolved around the Sun

Philosophical Contributions

  • Wrote Il saggiatore in reaction to controversy over his Copernican ideas about the Solar System
    • This condemned other works about comets and enforced his idea about a scientific method
  • Galileo's philosophy was heavily grounded in empirical observations and advocated the pursuit of science

Galileo and the Inquisition

  • Galileo faced warnings about his Copernican model from Cardinals
  • When he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he was summoned to Rome to face the Inquisition
  • In 1633, he was found guilty of heresy and sentenced to house arrest
  • He died outside of his home in 1643 in Florence

Sources

http://galileo.rice.edu/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/224058/Galileo/

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