Person1564 – 1642

Galileo Galilei

Also called: Galileo

Italian astronomer and physicist whose telescopic observations supported heliocentrism, which he was forced to recant before the Inquisition in 1633

Born in Pisa, the son of a musician, he studied medicine at the University of Pisa before turning to mathematics. Legend has it that he discovered the regular swing of the pendulum by watching a lamp sway in Pisa Cathedral. After eighteen years teaching at Padua, he named the moons of Jupiter after the Medici family and became court mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He wrote in Italian rather than Latin and cast his works as dialogues so that many could read them. He went blind in old age but continued his research with his pupils.

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1610 – 1633Galileo’s Telescope and His Trialleader
In 1610 Galileo used telescopes of his own making to observe the mountains of the Moon and the moons of Jupiter, supporting heliocentrism, but in 1633 the Roman Inquisition forced him to abjure it.

Themes this person appears in

Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and the English Revolutions1543 – 1796
The Scientific Revolution from Copernicus to Newton, parliamentary government in England won through the Puritan and Glorious Revolutions, and the Enlightenment that sought to remake society by reason — the groundwork of the civic revolutions and the Industrial Revolution