Galileo

Galilei
1564-1642

Galileo Galilei (Italian pronunciation: [alilo alili]; 15 February 1564[3] 8

January 1642) was
an Italian polymath: astronomer, physicist, engineer,philosopher,
and mathematician, he played a major role in the scientific revolution of the
seventeenth century.
He has been called the "father of observational astronomy",[4] the "father of
modern physics",[5][6] the "father of scientific method",[7] and the "father ofscience".[8]
[9]

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 and Copernicanism was controversial
during his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentrism or the Tychonic
system.[10] He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism
because of the absence of an observed stellar parallax.[10] The matter was
investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that
heliocentrism was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since
it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture."[10][11][12] 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.[10] He was tried by
the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He
spent the rest of his life under house arrest.[13][14] While under house arrest, he
wrote one of his best-known works,Two New Sciences, in which he summarized
work he had done some forty years earlier on the two sciences now
called kinematics and strength of materials.[15][16]

The science of astronomy took a huge leap forward

in the first decade of the 1600s with the invention of the optical telescope and its use to study
the night sky. Galileo Galilei did not invent the telescope but was the first to use it systematically
to observe celestial objects and record his discoveries. His book, Sidereus nuncius or The
Starry Messenger was first published in 1610 and made him famous. In it he reported on his
observations of the Moon, Jupiter and the Milky Way. These and subsequent observations and
his interpretations of them eventually led to the demise of the geocentric Ptolemaic model of the
universe and the adoption of a heliocentric model as proposed in 1543 by Copernicus.