Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, February 15, 1564. His father was Vincenzo Galileo who played an important role in the musical revolution from medieval polyphony to harmonic modulation. At the age of twelve Galileo was enrolled in the monastery school at Vallombrosa where monks taught him. Galileo’s father determined that his son should be a doctor, pulled him out of the school and sent him to the University of Pisa in 1581 where he would study medicine and the philosophy of Aristotle for the next four years. In 1585 after convincing his fath

In 1610, Galileo was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua. At the new university Galileo invented a calculating compass for the practical solution of mathematical problems, turned from the speculative physics to careful measurements, discovered the law of falling bodies and of the parabolic path of projectiles, studied the motion of pendulums, and investigated mechanics and the strength of materials. During this time Galileo became convinced of the truth of the theory proposed by the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus that all planets including earth revolved around the sun. Galileo builds his first telescope and with it he saw clear evidence that Ptolemy’s claims about the heavens were false. The first thing he saw was that the moon was mountainous and pitted, much like earth, and in 1610 he discovered four moons circling Jupiter which he published as Starry Messenger.

Galileo had tried several times with no luck to work under the Medici family who had ruled for centuries and had dominated banking and commerce in Florence also being influential in church matters. Galileo saw his discovery of the four moons as his best chance and so he sent Starry Messenger, his finest telescope, and a personal plea to the Medici family. Soon he was granted the position of mathematician and philosopher and it also put him in Florence the center for ideas and thinking. In leaving for Florence Galileo left behind his mistress and young son and placed his daughter Virginia and younger sister Olivia in the convent of San Mateo outside of Florence. This was not uncommon in order to keep women safe and since Virginia was illegitimate it would be hard for her to marry and would require a large dowry, which Galileo did not have.

The Inquisition sentenced Galileo to formal imprisonment there in a cell but after negotiating he was given the chance to renounce his errors or spend the rest of his life in chains. After renouncing himself Galileo spent months in the Tuscan embassy not knowing when he could return home. Six months later Galileo was allowed to leave but once home was confined to his own house, he couldn’t teach, travel, or visit his nearby daughter at the convent without permission. During Galileo’s absence in Rome his daughter Maria had become sick and in a state of very bad health due to her convents very bad living standards. Sister Maria’s convent was known as a convent of poverty and so when Maria got sick with a usually not serious illness, dysentery, combined with her weak state of health, she died at the young age of thirty-three.

Now fighting blindness and the loss of his daughter Galileo reviewed his early work. Using ramps and balls Galileo came up with a mathematical rule for actually predicting the motion of objects, which revolutionized the physics of motion, called Discourses Concerning the New Sciences, which was published in Leiden in 1638. This the last of Galileo’s works might have proved to be the most important opening a road to lead Newton to the law of universal gravitation that linked Kepler’s planetary laws with Galileo’s mathematical physics. Finally at Arceti, near Florence Galileo died on January 8, 1642. It wasn’t until 1992 that pope John Paul the second ordered a papal commission acknowledging the Vatican’s error. Although Galileo’s discoveries on precise measurements were revolutionary and his books opened new vistas i

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