Born: February 15, 1564
Death: January 8, 1642
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. He was the oldest of seven children. His father was a musician and wool trader, who wanted his son to study medicine as there was more money in medicine. At age eleven, Galileo was sent off to study in a Jesuit monastery.At age twenty, Galileo noticed a lamp swinging overhead while he was in a cathedral. Curious to find out how long it took the lamp to swing back and forth, he used his pulse to time large and small swings. Galileo discovered something that no one else had ever realized: the period of each swing was exactly the same. The law of the pendulum, which would eventually be used to regulate clocks, made Galileo Galilei instantly famous.Galileo was a devout Catholic who seriously considered pursuing a career in the priesthood. Instead, at his father's urging, he enrolled at the University of Pisa to study medicine, but switched to mathematics. He was appointed the chair of mathematics in 1589. In 1592 he moved to the University of Padua, teaching in the fields of mathematics, geometry, and astronomy until 1610. Among other things, Galileo has been called:
· The father of science · The father of modern physics · The father of modern astronomy
· The father of observational science
Some of Galileo's most significant work was in the field of kinematics, identifying that the total distance covered is proportional to the square of the time. He also identified the parabola as the ideal trajectory for uniformly accelerated motion in a plane. In 1608, the telescope was invented in the Netherlands. Over the next year, Galileo had heard about it and crafted his own improvements. With the improved telescope, he was able to observe the heavens more closely than ever before and identified three of Jupiter's moons. This, along with observing the phases of Venus, provided support for the Copernican heliocentric model of the universe over Ptolemy's geocentric model. In addition, he made many other significant observations. He was the first to observe sunspots, the rings of Saturn and lunar mountains and craters. Galileo's Imprisonment sentence had three parts:
· He was required to recant his heliocentric views
· He was imprisoned (though this later got commuted to house arrest at his estate near Florence)
· His Dialogue was banned, and all other works written by him were forbidden, though this latter part was not enforced.
While under house arrest, Galileo wrote Two New Sciences, which outlined his earlier work in kinematics and the strength of materials.Galileo died of natural causes in 1642, after having gone blind. He was reburied at Santa Croce, sacred ground, in 1737.
No comments:
Post a Comment