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Galileo Galilei, son of Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati was born in
Pisa on February 15, 1564. Vincenzo, who was born in Florence in 1520,
was a teacher of music and a fine lute player. In 1572, when
Galileo was eight years old, his family returned to Florence,
his father's home town. However, Galileo remained in Pisa and
lived for two years with Muzio Tedaldi who was related to Galileo's
mother by marriage. When he reached the age of ten, Galileo left
Pisa to join his family in Florence and there he was tutored
by Jacopo Borghini.
His parents sent
him to the Camaldolese
Monastery at Vallombrosa, 33 kilometres
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southeast of Florence.
The Order combined the solitary life of the hermit with
the strict life of the monk, and soon the young Galileo found this
life an attractive one. He became a novice, intending to join the
Order,
but this did not please his father who had already decided that his
eldest son should become a medical doctor. Vincenzo had Galileo return
from Vallombrosa to Florence and give up the idea of joining the
Camaldolese order.
Galileo never seems to have taken medical studies seriously, attending
courses on his real interests which were in mathematics and natural
philosophy. Galileo returned to Florence
for the
summer vacations and there continued to study mathematics. Galileo
began teaching mathematics, first privately in Florence and then
during 1585-86 at Siena where he held a public appointment. In
1586 he wrote his first
scientific
book "The Little Balance" (La Bilancetta) which
described
Archimedes' method of finding the specific gravities of substances
using a balance. By the end of 1609, Galileo
had turned his telescope on the night sky and began to make remarkable
discoveries. The astronomical discoveries he made with his telescopes
were described in a short book, written in Latin, called "The Starry
Messenger" (Sidereus Nuncius) published
in Venice in May 1610. This work caused a sensation. Galileo claimed
to have seen mountains on the Moon, to have proved the Milky Way
was
made up of tiny stars, and to have seen four small bodies orbiting
Jupiter. With the intent of getting a position in Florence,
he quickly named 'the Medicean planets'.
In February 1632, Galileo published "Dialogo Sopra I Due Massimi
Sistemi" (Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World
- Ptolemaic and Copernican.
It takes the form of a dialogue between Salviati, who argues for
the Copernican system, and Simplicio who is an Aristotelian philosopher.
The climax of the book is an argument by Salviati that the Earth
moves
which was based on Galileo's theory of the tides. At the trial that
followed, Galileo was accused of breaching the conditions
laid down by the Inquisition in 1616. The truth of the Copernican
theory was not an issue; therefore, it was taken as a fact at the
trial
that this
theory was false.
Found guilty, Galileo was condemned to lifelong imprisonment, but
the sentence was carried out somewhat sympathetically and it amounted
to
house arrest rather than a prison sentence. He was able to live
first with the Archbishop of Siena, then later to return to his
home in Arcetri,
near Florence, but had to spend the rest of his life watched over
by officers from the Inquisition. Consumed by sadness and melancholy,
he became totally blind and died on January 8, 1642. He is considered
to be the creator of the modern scientific prose.(Source: J J O'Connor and E F
Robertson,
www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk)
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