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GALILEO
GALILEI
BIOGRAPHY
1030L GALILEO
GALILEI
THE FATHER OF MODERN
OBSERVATIONAL ASTRONOMY
Born Died
February 15, 1564 January 9, 1642
Pisa, Italy Florence, Italy
By Cynthia Stokes Brown, adapted by Newsela An Italian Renaissance man, Galileo used a telescope of his own invention to collect evidence that supported a Sun-centered model of the Solar System.
23Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy, on February 15, 1564. He was the first of seven children. Galileo’s father was a musician — a lute player — from a noble background. Adriatic Sea.
At the age of 31, Galileo showed his first interest in astronomy, while studying tides. Padua is near Venice, an important trading port on the When Galileo was 10, his family moved to Florence, northeast of Rome, where he was educated in a monastery. He wanted to become a priest, but his father pushed him to study medicine at the University of Pisa. philosophy.
Astronomy was considered part of mathematics at the time, while cosmology, which is the study of the origins of the Universe, was part of University studies at that time were based primarily on Aristotle’s philosophy, but Galileo’s sharp observations caused him to question some of these accepted views.
Most scholars still agreed with Ptolemy and Aristotle that all heavenly bodies revolve around Earth (a geocentric model).
But other views were being considered. Nicolaus Copernicus claimed that all bodies revolve around the Sun (a heliocentric model). Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe believed that Earth was fixed but other planets orbited For example, he noticed that hailstones of different sizes reached the ground simultaneously, contradicting Aristotle’s rule that objects of different sizes fall at different speeds. around the Sun.
At this time, Galileo also sat in on lectures by a practical mathematician.
In 1597, a German visitor gave Galileo a book by German astronomer
Johannes Kepler, who was enthusiastically pro-Copernicus. Galileo wrote a letter to Kepler stating that he had long agreed with Copernicus but that he hadn’t made his thoughts public because he was frightened that he would become, like Copernicus, “mocked and hooted by an infinite multitude.”
Professor at Pisa and Padua
After four years at the university, Galileo gave private lessons in mathematics and wrote his first scientific paper, about how things float on water. In
1587, he got a position teaching mathematics at the University of Pisa, which paid him a small salary.
In the same year, Galileo invented a mechanical device for mathematical calculations. Galileo had a craftsman make them, so that he could sell the devices and give classes on how to use them.
Professors at Padua usually didn’t marry. Anyway, prominent families in Padua did not view Galileo as a suitable husband.
Two years later, Galileo’s father died, leaving Galileo with financial responsibilities. The next year he became the chair of mathematics at the famous
University of Padua. The new position paid three times as much. In addition to mathematics, Galileo gave private instruction in military architecture, fortification, surveying, and mechanics.
Instead, Galileo established a long relationship with a non-noble woman
14 years younger than him. He never married Marina Gama, but he had three children with her. She and the children lived separately, around the corner from him.
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This event clearly challenged Aristotle’s claim that no change could ever take place in the heavens. From then on, observation and experimentation became the basis for Galileo’s work.
In July 1609, Galileo heard about a Dutch device for making distant objects look nearer — an early telescope. A friend who saw it described it to Galileo as having two lenses, one on each end of a 4-foot tube. Within about a month, Galileo had made a telescope three times as powerful as the Dutch device. Galileo continued to work on his telescope, making his own lenses.
Using the telescope, Galileo saw four moons orbiting Jupiter. This contradicted Ptolemy’s idea that the Earth is the center of all orbiting bodies.
Galileo published his findings in March 1610 as The Starry Messenger. The general public was excited, but most philosophers and astronomers declared it an optical illusion.
Mathematics at the court of Tuscany
Galileo was offered a lifetime job at the University of Padua, but Florence was his home, and he wanted freedom from teaching. So he took the job of court mathematician in Florence.
Soon after his arrival in Florence in September 1610, Galileo began his observations of Venus. Over time, he discovered that the Moon-like phases of Venus demonstrated that the neighboring planet had an orbit independent of Earth. This showed conclusively that Venus circled the Sun, as
Copernicus thought, not Earth, as Ptolemy thought. But it did not yet prove conclusively that Earth circled the Sun.
An undated engraving of Galileo and his telescope
When Galileo left Padua in 1610 to move to Florence, he put their two daughters in a convent and left his son with Marina.
In 1613, Galileo published his Letters on Sunspots, based on his observations of the dark spots on the Sun that are caused by intense magnetic activity.
Galileo’s first known astronomical observation occurred in 1604, when a supernova was visible in the sky. A supernova is the explosive death of a large star.
67In an appendix, he noted that he agreed with Copernicus. Galileo had no definitive evidence that Copernicus was right, and he didn’t claim that he did. Galileo’s main pieces of evidence were the phases of Venus; the eclipses of Jupiter’s moons; the existence of tides, which Galileo believed could only occur if the Earth moved; observable planetary speeds, and the distances of planets from the Sun.
For the next six years, Galileo worked on this book. His book didn’t take one position on the heliocentric versus geocentric debate. Instead, his book presented a discussion of the two views. One character gave Copernicus’s view, another gave Aristototle/Ptolemy’s view, and a third character was an interested regular person. The book was called Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – Ptolemaic and Copernican.
The book appeared in Florence in March 1632. An outbreak of the plague delayed copies being sent to Rome. In August, an order came from the Roman
Inquisition to stop all sales.
Drama with the Inquisition
In the early 1500s, the Catholic Church had a problem. Many people disagreed with the Church on different issues. Protestants were breaking away to form their own Church. Printers in many European cities helped ideas to take sides. spread quickly. Some of these ideas went against the Catholic Church.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand, protested the book. He felt the book actually argued for a heliocentric model, even though it wasn’t supposed In September 1632, Galileo was charged with “heresy” — disagreeing with the Church. He was ordered to come to Rome for a trial. He did not appear until February 1633 because he was ill.
To fight the spread of these ideas, the Pope set up a system of tribunals, or courts. It was called the Inquisition.
In 1616 — the year of Shakespeare’s death — the Inquisition authorities in
Rome decided to ban Copernicus’s book, On the Revolutions of the Celestial
Spheres. They banned the book because it argued for a Sun-centered solar Galileo denied that he was defending heliocentrism, but he finally admitted that one could get that impression from the book. He was threatened with torture and forced to publicly give up the Sun-centered model. His book was system. banned.
They also banned any other books that agreed with Copernicus. This included
Legend has it that as Galileo left the courtroom he whispered, “Eppur
Galileo’s works. si muove [Still it (Earth) moves],” but this was most likely invented later.
Galileo traveled to Rome. He thought the Church was making a mistake that would hurt its reputation. He believed the Catholic Church should keep science and religion completely separate. The Church did not agree with
Galileo. In the end, he agreed to obey the ban.
Galileo was crushed by the harsh verdict. The Inquisition put him under house arrest at his villa outside Florence. He was ill with a hernia, heart palpitations, and insomnia. A few months after his return home, his older daughter, Maria Celeste, who he was very close to, died.
In 1623, Pope Urban VIII gave Galileo permission to publish his theory on the causes of tides, as long as he did not take sides on the cosmological debate.
The following year, Galileo’s book was published in Latin in France, outside the grasp of the Catholic Inquisition, thereby reaching a much more sophisticated audience than the banned Italian text.
89Timeline of Galileo’s life
Studies at the University of Pisa
1581–1585 1610
Mathematician at the court of the Duke of Tuscany; observes Jupiter’s moons
1587
Teaches at the University of Pisa
1564 1590
Born on February 15
Teaches at the University of Padua in Pisa, Italy
1560 1570 1580 1590 1600 1610
1609
1572
Kepler publishes the first two of his Laws of Planetary Motion
Spanish conquistadors execute the last Inca leader, Tupak Amaru, in Peru
1571
Astronomer and mathematician
Johannes Kepler is born in Germany
1600
1545–1563
Kepler becomes an assistant to astronomer
Tycho Brahe in Prague
1588
Council of Trent: Roman Catholic Church resists Protestant movement, establishes Index of Prohibited Books
England defeats the Spanish Armada
During the time of Galileo Blindness and a legacy of truth
Galileo recovered from his serious setbacks. In 1637, he wrote a book summarizing all his ideas. The book was translated into English, and Isaac
Newton read it in 1666.
1632
Publishes Dialogue
Concerning the Two
Chief World Systems
1633
Convicted of heresy; forced to recant; sentenced to house arrest
By 1638, Galileo had become totally blind. He wrote many letters by dictating them to others. He died on January 9, 1642, in Florence, at the age of 77.
1637
Publishes Discourses and Mathematical
Demonstrations
The Catholic Church didn’t lift the ban on Galileo’s book for 200 years — not until 1835. In 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret at how the Church treated Galileo.
1642
Galileo’s own words to a friend about his blindness serve as a suitable epitaph:
Dies on
January 9 in Florence,
Italy
Alas, your friend and servant Galileo has for the last month been irremediably blind, so that this heaven, this Earth, this Universe which I, by my remarkable discoveries and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred times beyond what had been believed by wise men of past ages, for me is from this time forth shrunk into so small a space as to be filled by my own sensations. (Drake, p. 107)
1620 1630 1640
1637
French philosopher René
Descartes publishes Discourse on Method where he states,
“I think, therefore I am.”
1631
Mount Vesuvius erupts near Naples, Italy
1625
New Amsterdam (later New
York) is founded by the Dutch West India Company Sources
Drake, Stillman. Galileo: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1980.
Galilei, Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Trans. by Stillman Drake. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
Heilbron, John L. Galileo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Reston, James, Jr. Galileo: A Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
Sharratt, Michael. Galileo: Decisive Innovator. Oxford and Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell, 1994.
Image credits
An undated portrait of Galileo
© Bettmann/CORBIS
An engraving of Galileo with his telescope
© Mary Evans / PhotoResearchers, Inc
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