Galileo Galilei: Father of Modern Science, BIOGRAPHY OF Galileo Galilei

                                           
                                     BIOGRAPHY OF Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was a truth seeker. His quest for truth, though, was to bringhim into conflict with the most powerful institution of his day – the Roman Catholic Church.

Through such inventions as the telescope,he revealed truths that landed him in front of the Holy Roman inquisition, fighting forhis very survival. Condemned during his life, he is now reveredas a true genius.

In this today’s Biographics, we get thefull story on Galileo Galilei. BeginningsGalileo Galilei was born on February 15th, 1564 in Pisa, Italy. He was the first of six children to Vincenzode Bonajuti de Galilei and Giula Galilei. The Galilee’s were from an ancient, respectedfamily who originated in Florence. Vincenzo was a wool trader who also had anabiding interest in philosophy, science and music. At the age of four days, young Galileo wasbaptized a Catholic. He was raised according to the strict tenetsof that faith, as was everyone else in the region. From an early age, Galileo showed an intenseinterest in making things.
                                                         
He was constantly making small gadgets thatwould amuse his friends and teachers. These would include wooden animals with movingarms and legs. He was fascinated with how machines workedand would be constantly pulling things apart and putting them back together. If he was making a machine and didn’t havea part, he would improvise. When Galileo was ten years of age, his fatherdecided to move the family to Florence. By now, Vincenzo had developed a reputationas a learned and wise man.

 Despite the demands of business, he had managedto write several books, the most popular of which was the Dialogue of Ancient and ModernMusic. Wealthy people streamed to him to benefitfrom his knowledge of Greek and Roman literature and to hear his musical theories. He was invited to spend time with Duke Albrechtof Bavaria, who lived in Munich, Germany, some 300 miles from Florence. Vincenzo was also an active member of theFlorentine Camerata, a group of musicians who were experimenting with musical drama,the genesis of what would be opera. Galileo and his siblings were, therefore,raised in an intellectually stimulating environment. Vincenzo taught his oldest son how to playa number of musical instruments, the favorite of which, for both, was the lute. Galileo also experimented with drawing andpainting, showing great promise in both areas. His teenage years coincided with the highRenaissance period, when Italy was being filled with the works of the great painters, sculptors,and architects.
                                                               
 He considered devoting his life to that ofan artist, but his father was keen for his son to follow him into the wool trade. Vincenzo had a great passion for the arts,but he knew that nothing but a solid business career would secure for his son a stable financialfuture. By the time that Galileo had reached his mid-teensit was apparent to everyone, including his father, that his keen mind was destined forgreater things than a life as a wool trader. Vincenzo saw it as his duty to encourage Galileoto use his God-given intellectual talents to the fullest extent. Through his studies of the works of Aristotle,Vincenzo had instilled in his son the discipline of independent study, observation and experimentation. Rather than being swayed by what others hadalready concluded on a matter, he would independently study the subject for himself and reach hisown conclusions based on those observations.

 When he was fifteen years of age, Galileoattended the Benedictine Monastery of Santa Maria di Vallombrosa. From the monks he learned religion and logic. After a few months, however, he had to returnhome due to an eye infection. Higher EducationWhen he was 17, Galileo passed the bachelor’s exam, permitting entry to the University ofPisa. Universities in the 16th century were placesattended by members of only the wealthiest families and were generally reserved for thosewith ambitions of being priests, doctors or professors. Although Galileo seriously considered thepriesthood as a young man, Galileo, or more likely Galileo’s father, had decided ona career in medicine. In order to achieve it, he first had to obtaina master’s degree. Galileo applied himself to his studies andmade excellent progress. However, several months into the first yearof his medical degree, he happened to overhear a geometry lecture delivered by a friend ofhis father, Ostilio Ricci. He was immediately attracted to the logicand beauty of the math that was being applied.
                                                                  
When Ricci heard from Galileo’s father thatthe boy was fascinated with his lecture, he invited him to take his course. Vincenzo had first made Ricci promise notto let Galileo know that he had consented to him taking the geometry paper in case hesaw it as permission to abandon his medical studies. In addition to attending Geometry lectures,Galileo worked one-on-one with Ricci as he studied the works of Greek mathematician Euclid. As he become more deeply immersed in the subject,Galileo became less interested in medicine. Finally, he confronted his father and askedhim not to stand in the way of his focus on geometry. Vincenzo was a realist, knowing that his sonwould not prosper as a doctor if his heart was not in it.

                                                     
He agreed to support Galileo in his mathematicalpursuits. Galileo the MathematicianAfter switching to mathematics, Galileo brought his full intellectual rigor to bear on thesubject. He was an excellent student, but he stillmanaged to frustrate his professors. The inclination to question everything thathis father had instilled in him meant that he would accept nothing as fact. Established theories were meaningless untilhe had personally pulled them apart, studies them and reached his own conclusions. It was the Aristotelian scientific methodin action, but it even caused the teenager to question the theories of Aristotle himself. One day when he was 19, Galileo happened tobe in the Pisa Cathedral for a mass observance. After the service he was wandering aroundthe building when his attention was caught by a sculpted bronze lamp located in the domeof the cathedral. The lamp was swinging back and forth likea pendulum. He observed that, regardless of the lesseningarc of the swing, the time that it took for each swing remained the same. To check this observation, he timed the swingswith his pulse. This led him to the realization that the rhythmicswings of a pendulum were an excellent way to measure the human pulse.
                                                          
 This was the inspiration for the later inventionof Galileo’s pulsilogium, a machine designed to take people’s pulses, or a harmonic oscillator. This was the first example of Galileo notonly observing and testing phenomena but also finding practical applications of his findings. Practical ApplicationsBy 1585, the financial strain of supporting his son’s university studies was too muchfor Vincenzo and Galileo had to withdraw from the University of Pisa. He hadn’t yet completed his doctoral degree. But the budding genius was not to be deterred. He embarked upon his own studies by examiningthe works of the great minds of Ancient Rome and Greece. After dissecting the works of Archimedes,he wrote his first scientific dissertation, in which he described an invention that hecalled ‘the little balance’.

This was a hydrostatic scale to measure theair/water balance. He also developed a horse-powered pump forcrop irrigation that was inspired by the famous Archimedes Screw. Just as his father had a decade earlier withhis muscle talent, Galileo began to impress important people with his practical applicationof science. He gained a reputation as an up and comingscientist. One man who was especially interested in Galileo’swork was the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte, a wealthy patron with an abiding interestin astronomy, mathematics and architecture. The Marquis began writing to Galileo and thetwo maintained a vigorous correspondence during which Galileo would explain his latest observationsand applications. Del Monte encouraged the twenty-two-year-oldGalileo to study the center of gravity in solid bodies, which led to the publicationof a treatise on the subject. University ProfessorIt was through del Monte that Galileo came to the attention of the Grand Duke of Tuscany,Ferdinand I de’ Medici. In 1589, the Grand Duke appointed him as aprofessor of mathematics at the University of Pisa.
                                                                    
 This was the position that Galileo had beenhoping to secure even since he had been forced to quit his studies. At the time, mathematics was a minor subjectof study at university that was not even seen as worthy of study by many. Galileo’s salary was only 60 florins a year,while philosophy professors earned 600 or more. In addition, he was looked down on by themas a young upstart who dared to question the teachings of the great Aristotle. To them this was akin to blasphemy, with thewritings of Aristotle being considered the final word on all things. Ironically, Galileo was simply following throughon the teachings of Aristotle himself, who championed independent study and observation,well aware that his own theories could well be overturned as new knowledge was observed. The most famous example of Galileo not simplyaccepting one of Aristotle’s theories because it was written down on paper had to do withthe speed of falling objects. Aristotle had contended that two objects ofdifferent weights would fall to the ground at different speeds, with the heaviest objectfalling faster. As the story goes, Galileo climbed to thetop of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, although the building thought to have been used mayhave been the church tower in Delft, and dropped two spheres of different masses to the groundbelow.

They both hit the ground at the same time,disproving Aristotle’s theory. Galileo’s experiment at the Tower of Pisawas believed to have been observed by many of his students and fellow professors fromthe University. Still, some of the professors refused to acknowledgethat the young man had just overturned one of Aristotle’ theories. This stubborn refusal to accept empiricalevidence that overturned long entrenched views is something that Galileo was to contend withfor the rest of his life. Making EnemiesNot long after the Tower experiment, Galileo was approached by a member of the powerfulMedici family, Giovanni de’ Medici, and asked to evaluate a machine that he had invented. The machine was designed to dredge harborbottoms of Leghorn to remove the mucky layer and make them safer for ships to come in. Galileo carefully studied the machine, onlyto conclude that it was badly designed and was not fit for purpose.
                                                                       
This presented a problem. Should he be honest and tell the man thatthe machine wouldn’t work or should he placate him with false praise? The Medici’s were the most powerful clanin Italy and Galileo was very wary of getting on the wrong side of any of them. Still, his loyalty to scientific truth wouldnot allow him to deceive the inventor. In a public forum, he spelled out what waswrong with the machine and assured everyone present that it would not work. His opinion was borne out when the machineproved to be a dismal failure. Galileo’s honesty had created a powerfulenemy. The humiliated Medici man was determined tobring Galileo down and set about getting him fired from his professorship at the university. Under the advice of the Marquis Guidobaldodel Monte, Galileo resigned his position. Del Monte had opened the door to a new posting,as the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua, 130 miles northeast of Pisa.

This was a big step up for Galileo. He was now making 180 florins a year, threetimes his previous income. No longer did he have to contend with theridicule of his fellow professors. He soon became a very popular lecturer withhis classes being fill to overflowing. At Padua, he also found the time to work onhis inventions and his writings. He became an expert at applying science tomilitary fortifications, designing reinforced walls for forts and mechanically superiorsiege engines. In 1593, was invited to Venice to give adviceon the ideal positioning of a rowing ship’s oars to generate maximum use of manpower. In 1593, Galileo developed an undiagnosedillness which had kept him in pain, affected his appetite and robbed him of sleep.
                                                                      
These symptoms would affect him for the restof his life. Despite his sickness he managed to meet hisuniversity obligations. At the end of his first six-year term at Padua,he was appointed for a further six years. By the end of the 1590’s, Galileo had inventeda range of products which were in demand all over the country. These included an irrigation pump that requirea single horse to power it and the sector which was used to measure precise angles. Lacking the time to produce each piece himself,he hired a craftsman named Marcantonio Mazzoleni to make his inventions. Galileo the AstronomerIt wasn’t until the mid-1590’s that Galileo took any serious interest in astronomy. Without studying the issue, he believed inthe Ptolemaic theory that the sun and other planets revolved around the earth. When a visiting lecturer spoke on the Copernicantheory, which contended that the earth and other planets actually revolve around thesun, Galileo did not attend, considering the theory to be ridiculous. Same time later, he was talking with someof his students who had attended the lecture. Most of them didn’t accept the new theorybut there was one who did.

It was then that Galileo had a simple butprofound realization – every person who had abandoned the Ptolemaic theory in favorof the Copernican theory would be subjected to ridicule. They would, therefore, only do so on the basisof overwhelming evidence. He was now obsessed with finding what thatevidence was. The question of whether the sun or the earthwas at the center of the universe would consume Aristotle for the rest of his life. Even though he continued to teach the theoriesof Ptolemy in his classes, he become more convinced that Copernicus was right. In 1597, he established written communicationwith German astronomer Johannes Kepler who was also an advocate of the Copernican theory. Kepler had published a work supporting Copernicusand encouraged Galileo to do the same. However, the Italian was worried that doingso would bring upon him the anger of the Catholic church which held that the earth was undoubtedlythe center of the universe. On a visit to Venice, Galileo met a womanby the name of Marina Gamba. A relationship developed, with Marina movingin with him. Before long a child was born to the unwedcouple, the first of three, two girls and a boy. In 1610, Galileo left Padua, taking his twodaughters (both given to the convent eventually due to their illegitimate births) but leavinghis son, Vincenzo, with Marina. Years later Marina married another man, butGalileo remained friendly with her throughout his lifetime. Growing FameIn the first decade of the 1600’s, Galileo continued to invent new technologies. In 1604, he observed and discussed Kepler’ssupernova..     
                                                             

 His talk was so popular that he had to movefrom the overcrowded lecture theater to an outside forum so that everyone could hearhim. In 1609, Galileo began working on a machinethat would magnify the night sky. He used two eyeglass lenses, one concave andthe other convex, placing them at opposite ends of a long metal tube. When looking through this ‘Venetian glass’,later called a telescope, the stars were magnified several times. The invention became a hit with prominentpeople from all over Italy clambering to get a look through the amazing machine which allowedyou to see things that were far away. His telescopes were also a profitable sidelinefor Galileo, who sold them to merchants who found them useful both at sea and as itemsof trade. The invention reflected positively on theUniversity of Padua, prompting the board to offer Galileo a lifetime professorship andincrease his salary to 1000 florins. Before long, Galileo had improved his telescopeuntil it was able to magnify up to thirty times.

This enabled him to look through it at themoon. He discovered that, rather being perfectlyround and smooth, as Aristotle had written, it was rough and filled with craters and valleys. His telescope also enabled Galileo to identifyand observe the moons of other planets. During the period between January 8 and 14,1610 he identified that Jupiter actually had 4 moons and are now called Io, Europa, Ganymede,and Callisto. Then in July of that same year he became thefirst person to identify the rings around Saturn, though he didn’t quite realize whatthey were at the time. Later that year he identified that Jupiterand Mars had phases, similar to the moon. Through the telescope, Galileo was able toidentify that there were many, many more stars than had originally been thought and, therefore,that the universe was much larger than previously thought. This upset many people who thought that throughhis telescope, Galileo was using some form of trickery to make his new discoveries. In 1609, he was invited to move to the palaceof the Grand Duke in Florence. He accepted, moving back to his home regionof Tuscany.
                                                                  
 His job now involved giving lectures to princesand other members of the royal family. No longer having to lecture, he now had thefreedom to study and write books. Growing OppositionBy 1615, there was a rising tide of opposition to Galileo. Many of his discoveries had flown in the faceof accepted Church doctrine, which was closely aligned with the teachings of Aristotle. People began asserting that his findings wereat odds with the scriptures, which were the revealed word of God. Galileo responded by writing that the Biblewas not a scientific textbook, but, where it touched on science, it was, actually inharmony with his findings. It was people who had interpreted the scripturesincorrectly. The letter that Galileo wrote soon found itsway into the hands of his enemies, particularly the Dominicans of St. Mark.

They viewed what he had written as heresyand they made sure that a copy of the letter got in front of the Pope in Rome. The pope called for the leading Dominicanto come and give testimony about Galilee. This man made the most of the opportunity,telling lies to paint Galileo and his followers as blasphemers. Galileo was not cowered. He considered those who spoke against himas ignorant fools and set out to defend himself. To do so, he traveled to the center of thecauldron itself, Rome. He appeared before the Holy Office on February26, 1616 and was ordered to never again teach that the sun was the center of the universe. His reasoned argumentation in his defensefell on deaf ears. Galileo remained in Rome to argue with hisdetractors. This was not pleasing to his patron back inthe court of Tuscany, who felt that the conflict could cause a rift between them and Rome. In June, Galileo finally complied, returningto Florence.
                                                                  
The stress of defending his reputation hadtaken a toll on Galileo. He was constantly plagued with physical painand spent increasing amounts of time bedridden. In 1617, he moved to a hilltop villa justout of Florence in order to benefit from the rural air. He continued to study the heavens but wasnow far more guarded about what he wrote. Then, in 1618, his ailments worsened. He was confined to bed for several weeks andbecame extremely weak. By 1624, there was a new Pope, Urban VIII. As a cardinal he had expressed admirationfor Galilee, but had never agreed with the Copernican theory. A slightly recovered Galileo was convincedto make a pilgrimage to Rome in order to meet with the Pope to assess his standing withthe pontiff. Urban received him well, even presenting amedal and promising a pension. Galileo also noticed that church officialsaround Rome were far less hostile to him than they had been.

 He felt confident, believing that the newPope had eased the pressure on him. In 1629, Galileo wrote a masterful work, DialogueConcerning the Two Chief World Systems which presented a dialogue between three men onthe merits of the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories. Before it could be published, he had to presentit to the chief censor of the press in Rome. He was forced to make changes that presentedthe Ptolemaic theory in the more favorable light and to state clearly that the ideasexpressed were not facts but simply opinions. Galileo made the changes, but a series ofdelays prevented the book’s publication until 1632. InquisitionThe new book brought out the ire of the enemies of the now 68-year old Galileo.
                                                            
When Pope Urban got to read it, he becameenraged. He had convinced himself that one of the threefictional debaters in the book was based on himself, and considered this to be the highestinsult imaginable. In August 1632, all copies of the book soldin bookshops were seized and the printer was ordered to cease publication. Then, in September, Galileo was ordered toappear before the Holy Roman Inquisition. After stalling due to ill health, he finallyheaded to Rome to face his inquisitors on January 20, 1633. He had to wait until April 12th to appearbefore the vice-commissioner of the holy office and two other examiners for preliminary questioning. It was stated that his book was in directviolation of the 1616 oath he had taken not to publicly discuss the teachings of Copernicus. In his defense, Galileo contended that thebook was simply a dialogue between the two theories and did not favor the view that thesun was at the center of the universe.

A second interview was held on April 30th. This time Galileo was more conciliatory, agreeingthat the arguments in favor of the Corpunican theory. . .come to the ear of the reader with far greater force and power than should have been impartedto them by someone who regarded them as inconclusive. This interview concluded with the examinersagreeing to give Galileo time to prepare his full defense. That hearing was held on June 21st. Before he could fully develop his defense,he was asked point blank whether he had ever held to the Copernican theory. He answered that he had initially been indifferentto both theories, but after careful study, now believed in the wisdom of the Ptolemaictheory.
                                                              
This was clearly not true and none of theexaminers believed him. The following day he was sentenced to a prisonterm, to be decided later and his book was banned. He was then mde to read a statement of apologyon bended knee. Pope Urban seemed satisfied with this outcome. Galileo had been both condemned and humiliated. The pope decided that the imprisonment towhich Galileo had been sentenced could be carried out by way of home detention at thegrand duke of Tuscany’s villa near Rome. However, Galileo was desperate to live outhis last years in his Florence, where his family were located. He wrote to the pope begging this indulgence,which was granted. He would be confined to the villa of his powerfulfriend, Ascanio Piccolomini. After five months he was permitted to returnto his own villa at Arcetri. The Last YearsGalileo’s final years were marked by ill-health. By 1637, he was nearly totally blind. Before his sight was gone completely, he managedto complete his last and, in his view, most outstanding work, entitled Discourses andMathematical Demonstrations of Two New Sciences.

Under the rules of his sentence he could notpublish it in Italy and so the manuscript was smuggled to Amsterdam and published there. During his last days, the blind genius receivedmany visitors to his villa at Acetri. He died on January 8, 1642 at the age of 77. He had been fighting fever and heart problemsfor months. Nearly a hundred years later, with his brilliancehaving finally been recognized, his remains were removed from the chapel at Santa Croceand relocated to a much more elaborate mausoleum inside the church. During this move, three fingers and a toothwere removed from his remains. One of these fingers, the middle finger fromGalileo's right hand, is currently on exhibition at the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy. A monument was also erected with a bust ofGalileo and two figures representing his monumental achievements in the worlds of astronomy and geometry.