Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei

Galileo was probably the greatest astronomer, mathematician and scientist of his time. In fact his work has been very important in many scientific advances even to this day.

Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15th, 1564. His father, Vincenzo was a music teacher and musician. After his family moved to Florence, Galilei was sent to a monastery to be educated. He was so happy there that he decided to become a monk, but his father wanted him to be a medical doctor and brought him home to Florence. He was never really interested in medicine and studied mathematics at the University of Pisa. He was especially interested in famous mathematicians like Euclid (geometry) and Archimedes. In fact in 1586 he wrote his first book about one of Archimedes theories. He eventually became head of mathematics at the University of Pisa where he first wrote about a very important idea that he developed. It was about using experiments to test theories. He wrote about falling bodies in motion using inclined planes to test his theories.

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When his father died in 1591 Galileo had to support his family. He looked for a job that paid more, and became professor of mathematics at the University of Padua where he stayed for eighteen years. He became very interested in astronomy at that time partly because of the discovery of a new star in 1604. (This turned out to be an exploding sun called a supernova). During these years he did more work on his theories of falling bodies, inclined planes and how projectiles travel. This work is still used today, for example in ballistics where computers can predict the path of a shell based on Galileo's work.

In 1609 the telescope was invented and Galileo began making his own lenses for better telescopes and then started looking at the sky. In December and January (1609-1610) it is said that he made more discoveries that changed the world that anyone has made before or since. He wrote a book called the "Starry Messenger", and said that there were mountains on the moon, the Milky Way was made up of many stars, and there were small bodies in orbit around Jupiter. He used his mathematical skills to calculate the motions of these bodies around Jupiter. In 1610 he started looking at Saturn and discovered the rings, and the phases of Saturn (just like our moon's phases). He helped settle an argument at that time about whether everything goes around the sun (Copernicus Theory), or the Tycho Brahe theory where the Sun goes around the Earth.

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After this he discovered