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A Short Biography of Galileo
Galilei
BØRJE FORSSELL
As the global civil satellite navigation system has been
christened Galileo, it seems appropriate that this journal include some
information about the renowned scientist and his activities -- Galileo's
world.
Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564. He became a
professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589. After three
years, his argumentative nature, nonconformist habits, and interesting
lectures had attracted many students to him, but he had become unpopular
among his colleagues. Consequently he moved to Padua, a more liberal city,
where he held a similar professorship until 1610. Then he joined the court
of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany as a mathematician.
Galileo's most famous achievements belong to mechanics
and astronomy. As a teenager, he discovered that a pendulum's time of
swing did not depend on its amplitude. He investigated the laws of falling
bodies and overthrew the widespread misconception that the rate of a body's
fall was proportional to its weight. (However, it is probably just a legend
that he proved it by dropping two cannon balls from the Leaning Tower
of Pisa.)
Hearing about a telescope invented in Holland, Galileo
built his own in 1609 and began to study sunspots and the motion of the
planets. In this way, he found convincing evidence that the earth moved
around the sun, a theory originally advanced by Copernicus more than 50
years earlier. At that time, the Catholic church punished those who openly
espoused this theory with death. When Galileo's beliefs became public,
he was reported to the Inquisition and tried in 16151616. He was
forbidden to work openly for Copernicus' theory. In 1630, however, he
published arguments in favour of Copernicus and went to trial again in
1633. This time, the heresy court forced him to abjure his theory. The
tradition that he muttered "E pur si muove!" ("And yet, it moves!") as
he left the courtroom is probably another myth, as he would not have survived
such a declaration. The heresy court sentenced him to house arrest at
his villa near Florence, where his health declined. He was blind by 1637,
and died in 1642. Because of his heretical taint, he was refused burial
in consecrated ground.
Galileo's career marks the real beginning of natural
science, combining mathematical theories and physical experiments. Before
Galileo, most scientists considered experimentation irrelevant, believing
that it detracted from the beauty of pure deduction. But Galileo described
his experiments and his points of view so clearly and convincingly that
he made experimentation fashionable in the learned community.
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