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Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was considered the central figure of the scientific revolution of the 17th century. His role in the history of science was a critical one. He revolutionized the way in which science was conducted, and performed experiments to test his ideas, which led him to be regarded as the father of experimental science. Galileo was born on February 15th, 1564 in Pisa, and was the oldest of seven children. His father, Vincenzo Galilei was a famous composer, lutenist, and music theorist. In 1572 at the age of eight, Galileo’s family moved to Florence, however Galileo stayed behind in Pisa and lived with Muzio Tedaldi who was related to Galileo’s mother for 2 two years. By the age of ten, Galileo joined his family in Florence and was tutored by Jacopo Borghini. By the age of eleven Galileo was sent off to study in a Jesuit monastery, the Camaldolese Monastery at Vallombrosa. Galileo soon found the life of a monk appealing and considered joining the Monastery. After four years of education in the Monastery he informed his father that he wanted to become a monk, which was not agreed upon by his father who had already decided that Galileo should become a medical doctor. Galileo was immediately ejected from the monastery and entered The University of Pisa to study medicine in 1581, at the age of 17. However his medical courses in the university never interested him and he did not take them seriously. Galileo was much more interested in attending mathematics and natural philosophy courses as these were his major interests and motivations. As a consequence Galileo dropped out of the university without completing his degree in 1585.
During his many trips to Venice, Galileo met a woman by the name of Marina di Andrea Gamba and entered a relationship with her. It was a brief relationship and the two never married but Galileo had three children with her. They were living in Galileo's house in Padua when his two daughters, Virginia and Livia, and son, Vincenzo were born. Virginia and Livia joined convents at an early age and became Sister Maria Celeste and Sister Arcangela. Galileo moved to Florence in the year 1610 to take a position at the Court of the Medici family. In 1613, Marina married Giovanni Bartoluzzi, and Vincenzio joined his father in Florence.
Galileo later took up a position as a professor of astronomy at The University of Pisa. This required him to teach that the sun and all the planets revolved around the Earth which was the conventional theory at his time. This geocentric model followed the teachings of the Greek philosopher Aristotle; however Galileo was convinced that Nicolaus Copernicus’ Copernican Revolution was correct. This is due to the fact that the observations that Galileo made with his telescope supported the fact that the Earth and all the other planets revolved around the sun. However in 1615, Galileo’s support and belief of the Copernican Revolution got him in trouble with the Roman Catholic Church. The Inquisition was an institution within the justice system of the Catholic Church that dealt with the persecution of heresy. In February 1616, the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church declared that heliocentrism was heresy, and Galileo was warned under order of the Pope to abandon all research, discussion, and support for it. However Galileo did not stop there, when his book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632, he was called to Rome and was put on trial by the Inquisition. Galileo was found guilty of heresy and was forced to publicly withdraw his support and beliefs of Copernicus in 1633. Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Galileo became blind at the age of 72. This was due to the damage done to his eyes by his frequent telescopic observations of the sun. A combination of glaucoma and cataracts also contributed to his blindness. In 1642 Galileo died at his home in Arcetri.
Galileo is considered to be the father of experimental science and his work in physics or natural philosophy, astronomy, and methodology contributed greatly to science. Galileo was responsible for the creation of modern science becoming a discipline and its concepts and method a whole philosophical system. Galileo’s contributions involved using a telescope to examine space, inventing the microscope, disproving Aristotles laws, inventing the law of the pendulum, advocating the relativity of motion, and creating a mathematical physics. However one of his most important contributions was the fact that he conducted experiments, thus making him the first experimental scientist. Testing ideas with experiments was not a conventional approach in Galileo’s years therefore he revolutionized the way which science was conducted. Some of Galileo’s most important contributions to science include building a telescope of his own from scratch without ever seeing one in 1609. The observations that Galileo made through his telescope gave evidence that Earth is not the center of all things and that the planets orbited the Sun. Among his findings were the moons of Jupiter, the fact that the Moon’s surface was rough and covered in mountains and craters, the complete cycle of phases of Venus, and sunspots. Galileo observed the changing appearance of sunspots and concluded that the Sun rotates once per month around an axis that is perpendicular to the ecliptic plane. These observations supported the Copernican model but rejected the philosophy of Aristotle.
Galileo is considered one of the most influential people in the history of science. Galileo was known for his trial by the Catholic Inquisition and for standing by his beliefs against opposition of the church. He revolutionized the way science was conducted and invented modern science as we know it. I chose to write about Galileo because he is an iconic figure in science and was responsible for immense scientific progress, through the work he conducted. What I liked about Galileo was that he followed his dream and pursued a career in what motivated him such as mathematics and philosophy. He also stuck to his beliefs even when society and the church opposed him, he was arrested for what he believed in and was a true revolutionary and inspiration.

References

Van Helden, A. (1995). The galileo project. Retrieved from http://galileo.rice.edu/bio/narrative_7.html

Machamer, P. (2009, may 21). Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/

O'Connor, J. J., & Robertson, E. F. ( 200, November).Galileo biography. Retrieved from http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Galileo.html

Western Culture Global, L. (2009). top 100 heroes of western culture. Retrieved from http://www.westerncultureglobal.org/galileo.html

Cowen , M. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/library/history/galile.html

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