Facts of 'Galileo Galilei'

The Scientist - 'Galileo'(1564 - 1642)

Did he really invent the telescope?????

One of the most prolific scientists of all time, Galileo’s life and accomplishments has been studied and written about in detail for centuries. From his discovery of the moons of Jupiter to his fight with Pope Urban VIII, noted authors and playwrights have been fascinated with both Galileo’s life and contributions. Galileo claimed to have discovered sunspots and that the sun rotates. His abrasive and outspoken criticism of Aristotelian philosophy and his obvious acceptance of the Copernican world view, particularly in his Dialogue concerning the Two Chief World Systems, led him into serious trouble with the Roman Catholic Church, which placed him under house arrest for the last eight years of his life.Some interesting facts...

1. Galileo was said to have dropped two cannon balls of different masses from the leaning tower of Pisa to demonstrate that their speed of descent was independent of their mass. Many people believe this story to be untrue since its only source was Galileo’s secretary.

2. Galileo was a ground breaking astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and inventor. Among his inventions were telescopes, a compass and a thermometer. He didn’t invent the telescope, either—he got the idea from a Dutch spectacles maker who had invented a spyglass. (He was the first to use a telescope to formally observe the sky, though.)

3. Galileo never married and had all his children out of wedlock with Marina Gambia, whom he met on a trip to Venice.

4. In March 1610, he published a small booklet, The Starry Messenger, revealing his discoveries that the moon was not flat and smooth, but a sphere with mountains and craters. In the same year Galileo discovered four satellites in orbit around Jupiter.

5. While many remember Galileo’s confrontation with the church, many forget that both his daughters joined the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri and remained there for the rest of their lives.

6. Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury painted “Galileo before the Holy Office,” a representation of the scientist speaking before the clergy currently on display at the Luxembourg Museum.

7. Galileo was an accomplished lutenist, learning from his father, Vincenzo Galilei, who was a composer and music theorist.

8. While Galileo firmly believed in Copernicus’s theory that the Earth was not the center of the universe, he did not believe in his Kepler’s theory that the moon caused the tides. For promoting Copernican theory, Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment, later reduced to house arrest.

9. In the last year of his life, when he was totally blind, Galileo designed an escapement mechanism for a pendulum clock called Galileo’s escapement.According to legend, Galileo began his study of the pendulum while watching a lamp swing back and forth in the cathedral of Pisa. Galileo never succeeded in building a pendulum clock.

10. A hundred years after he died, when his body was being moved for reburial, a fan snipped off the middle finger of his right hand as a memento.The middle finger of Galileo’s right hand has been exhibited at the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy. The finger points toward Rome.

11. German dramatist Bertolt Brecht wrote a play about Galileo entitled Life of Galileo, which first appeared on Broadway in 1947 with Charles Laughton as the title character.The song “Galileo” is the biggest hit of the folk group Indigo Girls. The song is about reincarnation through the lens of the story of Galileo’s role in the scientific revolution.

12. Galileo, buried between Michelangelo and Machiavelli, is said to have had his gravestone inscribed with the words “But the Earth does move.” It’s not true.