The total life history about Galileo Galilei and scientific works - its remember olden science development days

Italy, in the middle of the sixteenth century, was overrun with superstition and bigotry. Scientific education, such as it was, consisted of smothering free thought and preaching the doctrines of Aristotle regardless of their value. Whatever Aristotle did and said was right and there was no arguing about it. 

Aristotle said that if a one-pound ball and a hundred-pound ball were dropped from a great height, the hundred-pound ball would strike the ground first. If he said it, it must be so. Aristotle said that the earth was motionless in the center of the universe and the sun turned around it. If he said it, it was so.

            In addition to the narrow teaching in the universities, the church held complete influence over the masses. Whatever the bible said was true and anything that tended to contradict the Holy Scriptures was heresy, punishable by torture.

            Into this charming world was born one of the bravest and boldest thinkers in all science. On February 15^th, 1564, the wife of Vincenzio Galilee, a nobleman and a mathematician, presented him with a son whom they named Galileo.

            In 1581 Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. But medicine was neglected and mathematics and science substituted. Many times in class Galileo questioned the truth of Aristotle and was booed or laughed down. Many times he tried to show his instructors what he believed to be the truth only to have bad marks chalked up against him.

            On one occasion when Galileo was in the cathedral at Pisa, he noticed the swing of the long lamp which was suspended from the ceiling. This gave him food for thought and while others were praying, the law of the pendulum was born in Galileo’s mind. After numerous experiments and calculations, Galileo produced not only the laws of the pendulum but also the laws of falling bodies, the laws of equilibrium and the basic principles of the laws of motion which Newton subsequently formulated. The idea of gravity occurred to Galileo too but it remained for Newton to make it into a universal law.

            As Galileo’s mathematical works began to penetrate the outside world his fame spread. In 1592 he went to Venice and occupied the chair of mathematics at Padua University having already been professor of mathematics at Pisa. Wherever he went Galileo taught what he knew to be truth and because of his courage, he became the outstanding man of science in Italy.

            Galileo’s greatest claim to immortality is his invention of a telescope, which took place in 1609. This new instrument not only brought him world acclaim but it enabled him to explore the vast universe as it had never been explored before. He showed that the moon’s surface contained huge craters and tall mountains, that the Milky Way was not a cloud but a huge massive collection of billions of suns, that the planet Jupiter actually had moons revolving around it and many other startling revelations. He wrote extensively on the solar system always supporting Kepler’s ideas that the earth and the planets revolved around the sun.  

            Naturally, Galileo’s writings aroused the anger of the clergy and in 1616 the theologians of the Holy Office condemned him and his theory of the solar system as evil teachings contrary to the Holy Scriptures. The great influence of the church at that time made it necessary for Galileo to soft-pedal his radical ideas. When a man has to earn his living and has several worthless dependents he usually does the most practical thing Galileo did. He withdrew from the public eye for a time but kept on investigating scientific truth all the while. In 1632 he could keep quiet no longer and his famous “Dialogo dei due massinni susterni del mondo” (Dialogue concerning two chief world systems) was published. 

            This great work brought Galileo undying approval and commendation from every corner of the scientific world but it opened up the controversy of the scientific world but it opened up the controversy of 1616 with clergy who immediately forbade its sale. On October 1, 1632, Galileo was called before the inquisition in Rome but he did not appear there until February 1633. 

He was threatened with torture for his daring work but, because of his age and fame, his punishment consisted of reciting the seven penitential psalms once a week for three years. After each psalm the old man would say under his breath “And still the earth moves”.

            Galileo fought ignorance and bigotry to his very end which came in July 1642. His influence on physics cannot be overestimated for he was the man who paved the way for Newton.