Galileo was born in Tuscany into a very cultured old family, where he was assigned to medicine. Passionate about science, he is as interested in mathematics (he is a professor in Pisa then Padua) as in physics. Thus, he worked on the speed of fall of bodies, the principle of inertia of movement... Then, thanks to the invention of the optical telescope in Holland, he discovered the craters of the moon and the satellites of Jupiter, thus confirming Copernic heliocentrism (the sun is the center of the universe, around which the planets revolve). From then on, he published in Italian Messenger of the Stars in 1610, which provoked the wrath of the Church. Due to other publications and the teaching of his theories in Pisa, the Inquisition asked him to abjure heliocentrism in favor of geocentrism (Earth at the center of the universe, according to Ptolemy), which he did but would have whispered “and yet, it turns! » . He was forced into exile, but in Florence the Academy of Sciences was founded in his honor. Father of physics, he revolutionized the vision of the world.
1564 - January 8, 1642
Status
Scholar
Mathematician
Physicist
Astronomer