February 15, 1564
Pisa, Italy
January 8, 1642

Mathematician, physicist, astronomer

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

Galileo.

The Italian mathematician, physicist, and astronomer Galileo Galilei (called Galileo) was the foremost scientist of the Renaissance. (The Renaissance was a cultural movement that began in Italy in the mid-1300s and was initiated by scholars called humanists who promoted the human-centered values of ancient Greece and Rome.) Now considered the "father of modern science," Galileo made revolutionary contributions to astronomy, physics, and scientific philosophy. In 1612 he shook the foundations of the scientific world by supporting the Sun-centered theory of the universe, which the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543; see entry) had formulated nearly...