Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei 15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly known as Galileo, was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the “father of modern observational astronomy”,the “father of modern physics”,the “father of science” and “the Father of Modern Science”.According to Stephen Hawking, “Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science”.

The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honour), and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments.

Galileo’s championing of heliocentrism was controversial within his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic system.He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, and they concluded that it could only be supported as a possibility, not as an established fact.

Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarized the work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.

Galileo Galilei Quotes

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

And yet it moves.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.