Galileo Galilee

(1564-1642)

      Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Italian astronomer and physicist. The first to use a telescope to study the stars. Discoverer of   the first moons of an extraterrestrial body ( the moons of Jupiter). He is most famous for his many thought experiments in motion. As well, he made astronomical discoveries.But, Galileo was perhaps best known for his battle with the Church. He agreed with the theory that the planets   revolved around the sun. This model was first popularized by Nicholas Copernicus of Poland. Galileo was a very popular man in Italy and
had contacts in high places. Despite this, he wrote the various publications of his ideas and concepts in Italian as opposed to Latin. As a result, all the common folk could understand what Galileo was saying. Inspite of Galileo's great contributions to science, the church tried to stop his work. In fact, they forced him to retract his theories and state that the Earth was the center of the universe.
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         In the summer of 1609, Galileo heard about a spyglass that a Dutchman had shown in Venice. From these reports, and using his own technical skills as a mathematician and as a workman, Galileo made a series of telescopes whose optical performance was much better than that of the Dutch instrument. The astronomical discoveries he made with his telescopes were described in a short book called Message from the stars (Sidereus Nuncius) published in Venice in May 1610. It 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. These last, with an eye on getting a job in Florence, he promptly named 'the Medicean stars'. Also he found that the planet venus showed phases like those of the moon (in the telescope).

Galileo showed a marked tendency to use all his discoveries as evidence for Copernicanism, and to do so with great verbal as well as mathematical skill. He seems to have made a lot of enemies by making his opponents look fools. Moreover, not all of them actually were fools.

Galileo's publications were not recognized by the church as late as 1979 - more than 300 years after his death.