" " 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 only said that the church's persecution of Galileo had been a mistake, but also praised him as a brilliant mind who "practically invented the experimental method."