Quarter 1 Astronomer Post -- Galileo Galilei

Astronomer Project: Galileo Galilei

    He’s the father of modern observational astronomy and probably the first scientific figure that one studies in their pursuit of knowledge. He is one of the prominent figures to come out of the Scientific Revolution in Italy. A physicist,  mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, his observations and discoveries provide the groundwork for modern astronomy as we know it. He was born into a noble family iin Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564, to Vincenzo Galilei. His father was a proficient musician who contributed greatly to the theory and practice of music. Galileo went to school at the University of Pisa to study medicine, but was quickly captivated by mathematics and philosophy and switched to make the study of Aristotelian philosophy his profession, despite his father’s wishes that he pursue medicine. In and out of his university career, Galileo’s work in the study of motion, his hydrostatic balance design, the invention of the pump and many gravitational theorems won him respect throughout the scientific community and a patron, Guidobaldo de Monte.
    While sitting as the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa, Galileo made the major discovery that we all know him for. He dropped bodies of different weights from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, demonstrating that the speed at which they fell was not proportional to its weight. This discovery was in complete contradiction of Aristotle’s widely accepted claim that the falling speed of an object was entirely proportional to its weight. This blatant deviation from the status quo and his blatant disregard of the entire Aristotlean school of thought lost Galileo his position at the University of Pisa and many of his colleagues turned against him. He was picked up by the University of Padua. Upon hearing of the invention of the telescope in the Netherlands, Galileo quickly began work on creating his own telescope. Not only did he create his own telescope using spyglass lenses from a spectacle maker’s shop, but he also improved the instrument. He presented his creation to the Venetian Senate, gaining him a life tenure and doubling his salary.
    It was in 1609 that Galileo began to observe the heavens from an instrument that magnified 20x. It was with the telescope that Galileo made his biggest contributions to science. He observed and drew the phases of the moon and observed the craters and imperfections of the moon’s surface. In January of 1610, he discovered four moons revolving around Jupiter, Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. He observed the rings of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, and the sun spots and solar flares that make the sun the imperfect entity that it is. Each of these groundbreaking observations led to further support of the Copernican heliocentric theory. After publicly submitting to the Copernican theory, Galileo encountered opposition on all fronts. The Church and the Inquisitors of the time saw the Copernican theory as a blatant rejection of the Bible and silenced Galileo with threats. Upon receiving approval from Pope Urban VIII, Galilei was able to publish Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican, which was to maintain the Copernican theory strictly as a hypothetical possibility. The Romans did not think it was objective enough and charged him of heresy and sentenced him to a life of imprisonment. He continued to work even during his comfortable stint at the home of a Vatican ambassador. It was not untill about 1700, more than fifty years after his death in 1642 that the heliocentric universe was finally accepted, but the effects Galileo Galilei’s work in modern science and mathematics have been felt through out the ages.