Galileo Galilei often known, as Galileo was a very famous scholar and an Italian scientist who pioneered astronomy and modern physics. He was born in Pisa, Italy on 15 February 1564 and spent valuable time of his life by providing the services as professor of mathematics. He was the sixth child of Giulia Ammannati and well known and famous musician of his time Vincenzo Galilei. Spending very early years of his life in Italy, Galileo shifted along with his family in the year 1574 in Florence and there began his proper education at the Camaldolese Monastery in Vallombrosa (Sis, 2000). In the year 1583, with high passion of acquiring well education, he admitted in university of Pisa to begin the studies of medicine. Young Galileo had a keen interest towards exploring plenty of subjects and thus he finally took a halt of putting his intelligence and talent towards mathematics and physics.
He studied physics and went deep down into the subject’s elements to bring various observations related to nature. At Pisa University Galileo spent an outstanding time of learning a lot and studied according to the Aristotle’s view of the world. His career took a lead when he was offered to teach in his university even before completing his degree but unfortunately, he was compelled to leave his studies due to immense financial troubles. However, he continued to explore mathematics and joined various teaching positions so that he could make his both ends meet. His study towards exploring motion of objects and introducing principles of weighing smaller quantities were included in his publication named as “The Little Balance” that proved very attractive and brought him to a lime light. Gaining little fame, he accepted the offer from Pisa University to work as lecturer. That was the place that allowed him to do various experiments but Galileo in search of good results went against the principles and studies of Aristotle. As a result, no one supported him and he could not get a renewal of his contract in Pisa University in 1592.
Galileo was a talented man with potential to go beyond and do something exceptional. He gained a good position of teaching mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics at the University of Padua. However, the offer proved lucky for him but with the news of his father’s death. Overcoming the grief, Galileo devoted himself towards supporting family and completing his mission to provide good services as teacher, attracting huge mass of followers, and giving valuable and knowledgeable lectures (Wood, 1091). His positive intention and struggle helped him to reach at high position where he got increasing fame, respect, honor, and recognition of his talent and intellectual. Galileo was quite impressed by the technology and thus applied his experiments to technological applications and merging his skills published “The Operations of the Geometrical and Military Compass.”
His work was not confined to this but he went further to develop hydrostatic balance that could measure small objects quite easily. His exceptional and remarkable inventions were one of their kinds. As a result, he got overwhelming response and recognition and then switched over to other observations out of which he invented his own telescope. His curiosity to know more about the world and universe took him to the discovery of Jupiter, Venus, and moon and the things all around them. He explored that the moon was not flat but a sphere, Venus rotated around the sun, and Jupiter had various moons all around it. Galileo championed Heliocentrism but it proved controversial (Fayyazuddin, pp. 15-18). However, after facing some time of controversy he finally defended himself through “Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems.”
Galileo was forced to live under house arrest in which he wrote the work of “Two new Sciences.” This particular work was a summary of his forty years learning and knowledge related to strength of materials and Kinematics. Galileo’s innovative combination is still useful in the present time and will continue to be like that even for the coming generations and centuries. He died at the age of 77 after suffering from heart palpitations and fever, on eighth of January 1642.
Works Cited
Fayyazuddin, Ansar. "The Courage Of Rational Thinking: Galileo's Revolution." Against The Current 29.3 (2014): pp. 15-18.
Sis, Peter. Starry messenger: Galileo Galilei. Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media, 2000.
Wood, C. G. "Renaissance Genius: Galileo Galilei & His Legacy to Modern Science." Choice 47.6 (2010): pp. 1091.
