Galileo Galilei

it,s fact
Galileo's father Vincenzo was an italian composer,theorist,and lutenist.Vincenzo took part in the discussions which,after his death,helped transform the Florentine camerata into opera.Therefore Vincenzo was one of the pioneers of Modern opera, a fitting tribute to the father of modern science, Galileo.


Galileo Galilei
``````(1564-1642)
~~~~~~Father of Modern scientific Method

Born : Feb 15,1564,Pisa,Italy
Died : Jan 8,1642 (aged 77) Arcetri,Italy
Residence : Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Field : Astronomy,Physics and Mathematics
Institutions : University of Padua
Alma mater : University of Pisa
Known for : Kinematics,Telescope and
Thermometer,Solar System observations,Specially
Galilean moons
Religion : Roman Catholic


Before this idea was put forward scholars were content with ideas alone and completely neglected to test these theories with experiments.The scientist that Hawking credits,and made experiments fashionable was none other than the great Galileo Galilei.


Stephan Hawking,one of the most influential physicists in the world today said once that science as we know today owes a lot to an italian scientist who revolutionized physics and natural philosophy in the 17th century with his insistence of experimentation of theories to test credibility of ideas alone and completely neglected to yest these theories with experiments.The scientist that Hawking credits,and made experiments fashionable was none other than the great Galileo Galilei.



Galileo Galilei is considered to be one of the most influential scientists of all time by many historians.Only Newton and Einstein are considered in the same league as Galileo.Galileo thought that theories of the universe in the style of Aristotle was not enough to understand the Universe and insisted that experimentation was a key factor in science to disprove unreliable ideas.For this reason Galileo is considered to be the father of modern science including modern astronomy and mechanics as well.


After school Galileo entered the University of Pisa and after 1585 gave up his medical studies to devote his time to concentrate on mathematics and natural philosophy. In 1592 Galileo was appointed as professor of mathematics at the University of Padua and stayed there as an academic for nearly 2 decades. Around this time he started to support the Copernican view of the solar system, which placed the Sun at the centre of the solar system rather than Earth. This was in conflict with the AristotelianPtolemic theory which was popular among European scholars at the time.


Experimental science was further developed by Galileo by the use of the telescope recently invented by a Flemish inventor, Lippershay. Galileo improved the magnification of the telescope and looked at the Moon where he saw mountains and valleys on its surface which disproved the idea that heavenly bodies are perfectly spherical. He also discovered the 4 largest moons of Jupiter, which are lo, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. These are known today as Galilean Moons. This implied that all the heavenly bodies do not revolve around Earth as previously believed by many European scholars.In 1610 he published these ideas in the book "The Starry Messenger", known as "Siderias Nuncius". He also discovered that the Milky Way was a collection of a large number of stars, the Sunspots on Sun and the phases of Venus. It should be noted that when Galileo first put forward these ideas other scholars refused to accept these and some even commented that if the telescope was a worthwhile invention the Greeks would have invented it. Some even refused to look at the heavens using the telescope and thought of it as useless.


Galileo discovered taws of kinematics and proved that the acceleration of any body in freefall is uniform as well as contradictions with the Aristotelian mechanics . It is believed that Galileo disproved the idea that heavier bodies fall more rapidly than lighter ones by dropping two different weights from the leaning tower of Pisa, it is certainly doubtful. He discovered this not by sensational experiments but by mathematical applications to natural philosophy.


Later in his life, Galileo was taken before the Inquisition because he supported the Copernican system of the solar system. The Church authorities thought that Galileo's ideas could be a threat to their fight against Protestantism. Therefore the Inquisition declared that Copernican ideas "false and erroneous" and commanded Galileo not to support these theories in 1616.


Later Galileo got permission to write a book discussing both Aristotle's and Copernicus's ideas about the Solar system not taking a side, in the book "Dialogue concerning the Chief World Systems". This book electrified European intellectual thought and later paved the way to Newton's ground breaking work in Physics. But all these were used against Galileo and later he was forced to live under house arrest by Church authorities for heresy in 1633 and was quickly commuted to permanent house arrest. 



Many thanks to: http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 

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