Galileo, the brilliant Italian polymath, revolutionized our understanding of the universe through his groundbreaking discoveries in astronomy and contributions to scientific methodology.
Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley. Last Updated:
Alternative Title: Galileo Galilei
Galileo, in full
Galileo Galilei, (born February 15, 1564, Pisa [Italy] died January 8, 1642, Arcetri, near Florence), Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. His formulation of (circular) inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories marked the beginning of a fundamental change in the study of motion. His insistence that the book of nature was written in the language of mathematics changed natural philosophy from a verbal, qualitative account to a mathematical one in which experimentation became a recognized method for discovering the facts of nature. Finally, his discoveries with the telescope revolutionized astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the Coperni
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A portrait of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Italian physicist, philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, in an engraving by Spagnoli. DEA/ICAS94/Getty Images
Today, Italian astronomer, physicist and author Galileo Galilei, who lived from 1564 to 1642, might be most famous for having been put on trial for heresy by the Roman Inquisition in 1633. That event has come to symbolize the conflict between adherence to religious dogma and the intellectual freedom required by science.
Galileo s trouble with authorities actually stemmed not from his own work, but from his advocacy of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus heliocentric theory that the sun, not the Earth, was the object around which the planets revolved. Galileo was forced to renounce those views to avoid torture and execution and had to spend the last years of his life under house arrest. Even so, Galileo ultimately won the argument. Three-and-a-half centuries later, Pope John Paul II gave a speech in which he not