Galileo Galilei crushed the ancient belief that the Earth stood still at the center of the universe. This Italian polymath mastered astronomy, physics, and engineering, earning the title of the "Father of Modern Science." His obsession with the stars cost him his freedom, yet he refused to silence his discoveries. Beyond the telescope, he studied swinging chandeliers to understand time and even tried to measure the speed of light. Prepare to look through the lens at the life of this starry-eyed genius.
Galileo Galilei
Originally, Galileo Galilei enrolled in university to study medicine, not math. His father pushed him to become a doctor because it paid well. However, Galileo found the lectures boring and convinced his father to let him study mathematics instead.
He did not actually invent the telescope. Dutch spectacle makers created the first spyglasses in 1608. Galileo simply improved the design significantly, boosting the magnification power from three times to thirty times.
Legend says he dropped weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Stories claim he threw two balls of different masses to prove they fell at the same speed. Historians now believe this was likely just a thought experiment rather than a physical event.
Shockingly, a museum in Florence displays his middle finger. Admirers removed three fingers and a tooth from his body when they moved his remains in 1737. Now, the middle finger points eternally towards Rome inside a glass egg at the Museo Galileo.
He discovered that the moon was not a smooth sphere. Ancient philosophers believed celestial bodies were perfect orbs. Galileo used his telescope to reveal mountains, craters, and valleys on the lunar surface, proving them wrong.
Confusingly, Galileo Galilei thought Saturn had “ears.” When he looked at the ringed planet, his telescope lacked the focus to resolve the rings clearly. He drew the planet as a large circle with two smaller circles on the sides.
The Catholic Church sentenced him to house arrest for life. Because he supported the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun, the Inquisition found him “vehemently suspect of heresy.” He spent his final nine years locked in his villa in Arcetri.
He discovered the four massive moons of Jupiter. By tracking these “Medicean Stars,” he proved that celestial bodies could orbit something other than the Earth. This observation shattered the geocentric model of the universe.
Tragically, he went completely blind in his final years. Some suggest his frequent observation of the Sun caused this damage. Despite the darkness, he continued to dictate his theories to his students until the very end.
Galileo Galilei tried to measure the speed of light using lanterns. He placed assistants on distant hilltops and told them to flash lights at each other. While the experiment failed due to human reaction time, he correctly deduced that light moves at a finite speed.
His daughters became nuns because he deemed them “unmarriageable.” Since he never married their mother, society viewed the girls as illegitimate. Therefore, he sent them to the Convent of San Matteo in Arcetri to live in poverty.
A swinging chandelier inspired his work on pendulums. While sitting in the Cathedral of Pisa, he noticed a lamp swaying in the wind. He used his own pulse to time the swings and realized the duration remained constant regardless of the arc size.
He challenged the authority of Aristotle openly. For centuries, scholars accepted Aristotle’s physics without question. Galileo insisted on using observation and experimentation to test these ancient theories, birthing the modern scientific method.
The Vatican did not pardon Galileo Galilei until 1992. Pope John Paul II officially acknowledged that the Church erred in condemning the astronomer. Thus, it took over 350 years for the institution to clear his name.
Finally, Michelangelo died just days before Galileo entered the world. History often notes this link as a passing of the torch from the Italian Renaissance of art to the Scientific Revolution. Fittingly, he died the same year Isaac Newton was born.
