Running head: BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO GALILEI 1 Physics 1010 Project Biography of Galileo Galilei Phong Ngo Salt Lake Community College BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO GALILEI 2 Galileo Galilei is a well-known Italian scientist whose fields of profession include astronomy, mathematics, and physics. He had major contributions to the Scientific Revolution and has been honored with titles, one of which being “the Father of Modern Science” (Finocchiaro). Galileo was born to a noble family as the eldest child of Vincenzo Galilei’s six children in Pisa, February 15, 1564; though classified as noble, his family was not wealthy, which put them in financial difficulties during Galileo’s young adulthood. Three of Galileo’s five siblings, two sisters and the youngest brother, survived infancy. When Galileo was eight years old, his family left Pisa for Florence, his father’s homeland. He however stayed in Pisa with Muzio Tedaldi, a relative of his mother’s. Two years later, moved to Florence to rejoin his family. At the time Galileo reached the proper age, his parents sent him to study at the Camaldolese Monastery southeast of Florence. Galileo soon found comfort in the strict and solitary life at the monestary and desired to join the Order. His father, however, was not pleased of this and had him returned home since he had other plans for him. (O’Connor & Robertson) In 1581, Vincenzo sent Gelileo back to Pisa to live with Muzio Tedaldi and study medicine at the University of Pisa, for he hoped that Galileo would become a medical doctor. However, that was not what Galileo wanted, for his interest lay elsewhere. He neglected his medical studies and took classes in mathematics and natural philosophy. In summer 1583, he returned to Florence for vacation. (O’Connor & Robertson) While Galileo was in Florence, his father wanted him to enrich his medical knowledge by encouraging him to read Galen. Galileo yearned for his interests and thus invited Ostilio Ricci, a mathematician of the Tuscan court who taught a course on Euclid’s Elements at the University of Pisa, one of those Galileo attended, to his house to help him. Ricci spoke with Galileo father in BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO GALILEI 3 hope of persuading him to allow Galileo to study mathematics. Although Vincenzo strongly opposed this idea initially, he eventually gave way a little and let Galileo learn from the works of Euclid and Archimedes while “officially enrolled as a medical student at the University of Pisa.” By 1585, Galileo finally left the University of Pisa to follow his ideals without completing his degree. (O’Connor & Robertson) In 1587, Galileo traveled to Rome bring with him his discoveries on the centers of gravity, a popular topic at that time. He met Clavius and Guidobaldo del Monte, professors at the Jesuit Collegio Romano, and made favorable impression. He remained in contact with them through letters even after leaving Rome. In 1589, Galileo took on the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa with strong recommendation from Clavius and his reputation from his years of teaching mathematics at Florence Academy. (O’Connor & Robertson) In 1591, Galileo’s father passed away, and as the eldest son in the family, Galileo had to provide financial support for his siblings, which included the responsibility to provide dowries for his younger sisters. Teaching mathematics at the University of Pisa did not pay well enough for him to carry the financial burden, he searched for a better paying post. In 1592, Galileo became a professor at the University of Padua (Venice) with excellent recommendations from Guidobaldo del Monte, which pays three times being a mathematics professor at the University of Pisa. He taught there for almost 20 years, a period of time that he described as “the happiest of his life.” (O’Connor & Robertson) While Galileo was in Padua, he got into a relationship with Maria Gamba. They lived together and had three children out of wedlock; Virginia and Livia were born in 1600 and 1601 respectively, and their youngest son, Vincenzo, was born in 1606. Since Virginia and Livia were illegitimate daughters of Galileo, he felt that they should not marry and thus sent them to the BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO GALILEI 4 convent of San Matteo in Arcetri (Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Italy), the place in which they spent the rest of their lives. His son Vincenzo later became his legal heir. (O’Connor & Robertson) While Galileo was still a professor at the University of Pisa, he wrote a series essays concerning his theories of motion. However, he never published it until his late years. He discovered that the period of a pendulum is dependent of its length, not its arc. He also found that falling bodies fall at the same speed regardless of their size and material by dropping two objects from the leaning tower of Pisa. Additionally, he managed to correctly derive the correct formula for the distance traveled of an object undergoing a uniform acceleration from rest. Potentially, he might have been the very first person to understand how gravity works. (O’Connor & Robertson) One of the things that contributed to Galileo’s reputation is his innovations. In the 1600s, Galileo constructed military compass and thermometer. Although he was not the inventor of the telescope, Galileo was known for his significant improvements on it. A year after the telescope was invented, He made on of his own with 3x magnification. More surprisingly, he ended up making one with 30x magnification (Drake). With his telecope, Galileo made many remarkable discoveries in astronomy. His observations led him to believe in heliocentrism, the idea that planets revolves around the stationary Sun. Nevertheless, he never expressed this belief publicly until 1624. Because of this, the Catholic Church warned him that he should not discuss or defend heliocentrism, for it was against the Perfect World system of Aristotle. Pope Urban VIII, an admirer of Galileo (O’Connor & Robertson) however allowed him to write about it if he treat it as a mathematical proposition. Galileo however insisted that it is not just a mathematical proposition but a physical reality and thus published a book defending heliocentrism: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The Catholic Church quickly banned its sale and sentenced him to home arrest, in Arcetri, for the rest of his life. There, he wrote up some of his BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO GALILEI 5 last works, some of which was smuggled out and published elsewhere, before he died in early 1642 at the age of 77. (Wilde) BIOGRAPHY OF GALILEO GALILEI 6 References Finocchiaro, Maurice A. (August 15, 2007). "Book Review—The Person of the Millennium: The Unique Impact of Galileo on World History". DOI:10.1111/j.1540- 6563.2007.00189_68.x O'Connor, J. J., & Robertson, E. F. (2002). Galileo Galilei. Retrieved from http://www- history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Galileo.html Wilde, M. (n.d.). The Galileo Project. Retrieved from http://galileo.rice.edu/bio/index.html Drake, Stillman (1990). Galileo: Pioneer Scientist. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-2725-3 .