Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei


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Galileo Galilei. ©Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission of Corbis Corporation.

Introduction

Galileo Galilei is considered by many to be the “Father of Modern Science.” He was one of the first scholars to turn his attention from the logic of Aristotle and the question of “why?” to the observation of natural science and the question of “how?” Using quantifiable measurements, he demonstrated that the universe is made with an ordered precision, and its natural laws can be described by mathematics. His main contributions to science include his description of the motion of uniformly accelerated objects as well as his observations in astronomy, which ultimately proved Copernicus’s theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Galileo spent the last years of his life under house arrest after pleading guilty to heresy.

Essential Facts

  1. Galileo was born in 1564 in Tuscany to Vincenzo Galilei, a well-known and accomplished musician.
  2. Galileo made improvements to the newly invented telescope and eventually managed to make a telescope with 32x magnification. He found Jupiter’s four moons and observed their rotation. He also made observations of Venus that supported a Sun-centered solar system rather than the Earth-centered solar system previously imagined by scholars.
  3. Along with making contributions to the development of a universal clock, Galileo also created a military compass and a thermometer.
  4. Pope Urban VIII granted Galileo permission to write Dialogue Concerning Two Chief World Systems as long as he treated both the Sun-centered and the Earth-centered systems as theories. After it was written, the Pope felt that Galileo had defended Copernicus too strongly and Galileo was called to face the Inquisition. Confessing his guilt in order to secure a lighter punishment, Galileo was put under house arrest.
  5. Later in his life, Galileo became blind. There have been theories that his blindness came from his telescopic research, but most likely he lost his sight from cataracts or glaucoma.

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