This may not interest you, but it did me and I am hoping you will read this.:)
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. He was the
oldest of seven children. His father was a musician and wool trader,
who wanted his son to study medicine as there was more money in
medicine. At age eleven, Galileo was sent off to study in a Jesuit
monastery.
After four years, Galileo had announced to his father that he wanted to
be a monk. This was not exactly what father had in mind, so Galileo was
hastily withdrawn from the monastery. In 1581, at the age of 17, he
entered the University of Pisa to study medicine, as his father wished.
At age twenty, Galileo noticed a lamp swinging overhead while he was in a
cathedral. Curious to find out how long it took the lamp to swing back
and forth, he used his pulse to time large and small swings. Galileo
discovered something that no one else had ever realized: the period of
each swing was exactly the same. The law of the pendulum, which would
eventually be used to
regulate clocks, made Galileo Galilei instantly famous.
I was learning about Galileo in my Reading, it was mainly about him and how he discovered the telescope. I was very interested. This is just a little of the beginning of his life.
Except for mathematics, Galileo Galilei was bored with university.
Galileo's family was informed that their son was in danger of flunking
out. A compromise was worked out, where Galileo would be tutored
full-time in mathematics by the mathematician of the Tuscan court.
Galileo's father was hardly overjoyed about this turn of events, since a
mathematician's earning power was roughly around that of a musician,
but it seemed that this might yet allow Galileo to successfully complete
his college education. However, Galileo soon left the University of
Pisa without a degree.
This is what I was learning about:
In Venice on a holiday in 1609, Galileo Galilei heard rumors that a
Dutch spectacle-maker had invented a device that made distant objects
seem near at hand (at first called the spyglass and later renamed the
telescope).
A patent had been requested, but not yet granted, and the methods were
being kept secret, since it was obviously of tremendous military value
for Holland.
Galileo Galilei was determined to attempt to construct his own spyglass.
After a frantic 24 hours of experimentation, working only on instinct
and bits of rumors, never having actually *seen* the Dutch spyglass, he
built a 3-power telescope. After some refinement, he brought a 10-power
telescope to Venice and demonstrated it to a highly impressed Senate.
His salary was promptly raised, and he was honored with proclamations.
Galileo Galilei - The Moon
If he had stopped here, and become a man of wealth and leisure, Galileo
Galilei might be a mere footnote in history. Instead, a revolution
started when, one fall evening, the scientist trained his telescope on
an object in the sky that all people at that time believed must be a
perfect, smooth, polished heavenly body--the Moon. To his astonishment,
Galileo Galilei viewed a surface that was uneven, rough, and full of
cavities and prominences. Many people insisted that Galileo Galilei was
wrong. Some of their arguments were very clever, like the mathematician
who insisted that even if Galileo was seeing a rough surface on the
Moon, that only meant that the entire moon had to be covered in
invisible, transparent, smooth crystal.
Galileo Galilei - Jupiter
Months passed, and his telescopes improved. On January 7, 1610, he
turned his 30 power telescope towards Jupiter, and found three small,
bright stars near the planet. One was off to the west, the other two
were to the east, all three in a straight line. The following evening,
Galileo once again took a look at Jupiter, and found that all three of
the "stars" were now west of the planet, still in a straight line!
Observations over the following weeks lead Galileo to the inescapable
conclusion that these small "stars" were actually small satellites that
were rotating about Jupiter. If there were satellites that didn't move
around the Earth, wasn't it possible that the Earth was not the center
of the universe? Couldn't the
Copernican idea of the Sun at the center of the solar system be correct?
The Starry Messenger
Galileo Galilei published his findings--as a small book titled The
Starry Messenger. 550 copies were published in March of 1610, to
tremendous public acclaim and excitement.
Galileo Galilei - Saturn
And there were more discoveries via the new telescope: the appearance of
bumps next to the planet Saturn (Galileo thought they were companion
stars; the "stars" were actually the edges of Saturn's rings), spots on
the Sun's surface (though others had actually seen the spots before),
and seeing Venus change from a full disk to a sliver of light.
However, Galileo was found innocent of all charges, and cautioned not to
teach the Copernican system. 16 years later, all that would change.
The Church eventually lifted the ban on Galileo's Dialogue in 1822--by
that time, it was common knowledge that the Earth was not the center of
the Universe. Still later, there were statements by the Vatican Council
in the early 1960's and in 1979 that implied that Galileo was pardoned,
and that he had suffered at the hands of the Church. Finally, in 1992,
three years after Galileo Galilei's namesake had been launched on its
way to Jupiter, the Vatican formally and publicly cleared Galileo of any
wrongdoing.
Other facts: Galileo became blind and died not much later. He was disappointed that he could not see because everything he discovered was with his eyes.
Just saying not all of this goes through his whole History, I just put some in.
