Galileo Galilei was an astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and mechanic. He greatly influenced the science of his era and became the first person to use a telescope to observe celestial bodies. Scientists have made many brilliant discoveries in the field of astronomy. He became the founder of experimental physics and founded classical mechanics.
Galileo Galilei was born in the Italian city of Pisa on February 15, 1564 into the family of a noble but poor nobleman. After ten years he became a pupil of the monastery at Vallombroms, which he left at the age of seventeen. He went to university hometown on Faculty of Medicine where did you get it academic degree and became a professor.
In 1592, Galileo became dean of the department of mathematics at the University of Padua, where he created a series of greatest works in mathematics and mechanics.
The first discoveries using the telescope were described by scientists in the work “Star Messenger”. This book was a huge success. Scientists built a telescope that magnified objects three times. It was placed on the tower of San Marco in Venice. Thanks to this, everyone had the opportunity to observe the stars and the Moon.
Soon a telescope was invented that magnified eleven times more than the first. The discoveries made with this telescope were described in the book The Starry Messenger.
In 1637, Galileo went blind. Before the incident he wrote last book, in which scientists summarized all their observations and achievements in the field of mechanics.
The scientist's many years of work, a book about the structure of the world, played a cruel joke in his fate. In it, he popularized the theory of Copernicus, so it was in dissonance with Holy Scripture. For this reason, the scientist was persecuted for a long time by the Inquisition under threat of death. He was strictly forbidden to publish works until the end of his life.
Galileo Galilei's death occurred on January 8, 1642. The greatest scientist was buried without honors as a common person at the scientist's villa. However, years later, in 1737, his remains were solemnly reburied next to the tomb of the great Michelangelo in Santa Croce.
A few decades later, a decree was issued to lift the ban on the works of Galileo Galilei. But the scientist was finally rehabilitated only in 1992.
Option 2
In the winter of 1564, in the city of Pisa (Italy), a boy was born into a poor noble family, who later became a famous scientist not only of his century. The works of Galileo Galilei have passed through the centuries, being confirmed and supplemented new information. From childhood, young Galileo loved painting and music, was fascinated by them, worked on his skills, thanks to which he mastered these types of art to perfection. Study also attracted the boy, so he was the best among his classmates.
Galileo's father saw his son's future in medicine, and therefore, when he was first accepted into monastic order, and then became interested in studying geometry, he insisted on his son entering the University of Pisa. During almost three years of study at the university, Galileo studied and became imbued with many teachings and writings of antiquity. Further, his education became impossible due to the lack of funds from his family, but his keen mind young man, his curiosity attracted, and just in time, the attention of a certain Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte. He noticed the young man’s merits, and after 4 years Galileo returned to his university, now as a professor of mathematics.
In 1591, Galileo remained the eldest man in the family, since his father had died, but a year later he was offered a place at a very prestigious university, where, in addition to mathematics, he taught astronomy and even mechanics. Over the years of work at the university, Galileo's authority increased significantly. Students and professors wanted to attend his lectures. The scientist himself designed the first telescope in 1609, and in 1610 he left Venice, moving to Florence to a profitable position at the duke’s court. Later this act will turn out to be a mistake for him.
Thanks to the telescope he designed, Galileo made new and new assumptions about the structure of the cosmos. In particular, he becomes an adherent of the heliocentric system of the world structure and defends it in every possible way, acquiring an enemy in the person of Catholics. In 1611 he went to Rome, trying to convince the religious authorities of the compatibility of science and Catholicism. Having found a good reception in Rome, Galileo conducts seminars, answers questions, and explains the theory from a scientific point of view. And in 1615, the Inquisition opened the first case against a scientist on charges of heresy. The Church cannot accept a theory that would refute the Bible, and the Inquisition recognizes heliocentrism as heresy. Since 1616, any support for this theory has been banned. His further attempts to get the ban lifted do not lead to positive results.
Until 1633, the Inquisition conducted an investigation into the case of the heretic Galileo. Numerous arrests, interrogations, including torture - the scientist had to endure a lot for his science. Galileo spent the last years of his life near native land, but almost completely alone. The Inquisition, under threat of imprisonment, prohibits him from having visitors. Galileo Galilei died in 1642, but being blind and very ill, he continued to work in various fields of science and over the past 7 years he created a large-scale work, Conversations and Mathematical Proofs of the Two Sciences. Only almost 200 years later, his works were again revised, studied and found to be beyond the prohibitions.
GALILEO, GALILEO(Galilei, Galileo) (1564–1642), Italian physicist, mechanic and astronomer, one of the founders of modern natural science. Born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa into a family that belonged to a noble but impoverished Florentine family. Galileo's father, Vincenzo, was a famous musicologist, but in order to support seven children, he was forced not only to give music lessons, but also to engage in the cloth trade.
Galileo received his primary education at home. In 1575, when the family moved to Florence, he was sent to the school at the Vallombrosa monastery, where he studied the then “seven arts”, in particular grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, and became acquainted with the works of Latin and Greek writers. Fearing that his son would become a monk, his father took him from the monastery at the age of 15 under the pretext of a serious eye illness, and for the next year and a half Galileo studied at home. Vincenzo taught him music, literature, and painting, but wanted to see his son as a doctor, believing that medicine was a respectable and profitable occupation. In 1581, Galileo entered, at the insistence of his father, the University of Pisa, where he was to study medicine. However, he attended lectures at the university irregularly, preferring independent studies in geometry and practical mechanics. At this time, he first became acquainted with the physics of Aristotle, with the works of ancient mathematicians - Euclid and Archimedes (the latter became his real teacher). Galileo stayed in Pisa for four years, and then, becoming interested in geometry and mechanics, left the university. In addition, his father had nothing to pay for further education. Galileo returned to Florence. Here he managed to find a wonderful mathematics teacher, Ostilio Ricci, who in his classes discussed not only purely mathematical problems, but also applied mathematics to practical mechanics, especially hydraulics.
The result of the four-year Florentine period of Galileo's life was a small essay Small hydrostatic scales(La bilancetta, 1586). The work pursued purely practical goals: having already improved known method hydrostatic weighing, Galileo used it to determine the density of metals and precious stones. He made several handwritten copies of his work and tried to distribute them. In this way he met the famous mathematician of that time - Marquis Guido Ubaldo del Monte, author Mechanics textbook. Monte immediately appreciated the outstanding abilities of the young scientist and, holding the high post of inspector general of all fortresses and fortifications in the Duchy of Tuscany, was able to provide Galileo with an important service: on his recommendation, in 1589 the latter received a position as professor of mathematics at the same University of Pisa, where he had previously been a student.
Galileo's work dates back to the time of Galileo's tenure at the pulpit in Pisa. About the movement (De Motu, 1590). In it, he first argues against the Aristotelian doctrine of the fall of bodies. Later, these arguments were formulated by him in the form of a law on the proportionality of the path traveled by a body to the square of the time of fall (according to Aristotle, “in airless space all bodies fall infinitely fast”). In 1591, Galileo's father died, and he had to take care of the rest of the family. Fortunately, the Marquis del Monte achieved a position for his protégé that was more consistent with his abilities: in 1592, Galileo took the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua in the Venetian Republic. He was supposed to teach geometry, mechanics, and astronomy. He taught a course in astronomy, remaining within the framework of the officially accepted views of Aristotle - Ptolemy, and even wrote a short course on geocentric astronomy. However, his actual views on the system of the universe were completely different, as evidenced by the following lines from a letter to Kepler (August 4, 1597): “I came to the opinion of Copernicus (about the heliocentric system) many years ago and, based on it, I found the causes of many natural phenomena." In the first years of his professorship, Galileo was mainly engaged in the development of new mechanics, not built on the principles of Aristotle. He formulated more clearly the “golden rule of mechanics”, which he derived from the more general principle, formulated in Treatise on mechanics (Le Meccaniche, 1594). In this treatise, written for students, Galileo outlined the foundations of the theory of simple mechanisms, using the concept of torque. This work and notes on astronomy, disseminated among students, created fame for the author not only in Italy, but also in other European countries. In addition, in oral teaching Galileo often used Italian, which attracted numerous students to his lectures. During the Padua period of Galileo's life (1592–1610), his main works in the field of dynamics matured: on the movement of a body along an inclined plane and a body thrown at an angle to the horizon; Research on the strength of materials dates back to the same time. However, of all his works of that time, Galileo published only a small brochure about the proportional compass he invented, which made it possible to carry out various calculations and constructions.
In 1608, news reached Galileo about new instruments for observing distant objects - “Dutch trumpets”. Using his knowledge of geometric optics, Galileo devoted “all his labors to the search for scientific principles and means that would make it possible to construct instruments of this kind, and soon found what he wanted, based on the laws of refraction of light.” Historians of science almost unanimously believe that Galileo, if not invented, then improved the telescope. He made a pipe with a magnification of 30 times and in August 1609 demonstrated it to the Senate of Venice. Using his telescope, Galileo began observing the night sky. He discovered that the surface of the Moon is very similar to that of the Earth - it is just as uneven and mountainous; that the Milky Way consists of myriads of stars; that Jupiter has at least four satellites ("moons"). Galileo called these satellites "Medici luminaries" in honor of the Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II de' Medici. In March 1610, Galileo's short work was published in Latin, containing an overview of all his telescopic discoveries. It was called Star Messenger (Siderius Nuncius) and was published in a very large circulation for that time: 550 copies, sold out within a few days. Galileo not only demonstrated celestial objects to his fellow citizens through a telescope, but also sent copies of the telescope to the courts of many European rulers. The “Medicine stars” did their job: in 1610 Galileo was confirmed for life as a professor at the University of Pisa with an exemption from lecturing, and he was awarded three times the salary he had received before. In the same 1610, Galileo moved to Florence. There were many reasons for this. And his desire to get a place at the court of the Duke of Tuscany (by this time he became Cosimo II Medici), and family problems, and tense relations with some colleagues at the university, who did not forgive his scientific success and high salary. The 18-year period of Galileo's stay in Padua, which he admitted was the most calm and fruitful, ended.
Thoughts expressed by Galileo in Starry Messenger, did not fit into the framework of the Aristotelian worldview. They coincided with the views of Copernicus and Bruno. Thus, Galileo considered the Moon to be similar in nature to the Earth, and from the point of view of Aristotle (and the church) there could be no question of the similarity of “earthly” and “heavenly”. Further, Galileo explained the nature of the “ash light” of the Moon by the fact that its dark side at this time is illuminated by the light of the Sun reflected from the Earth, and from this it followed that the Earth is only one of the planets revolving around the Sun. Galileo draws similar conclusions from his observations of the movement of Jupiter’s satellites: “...now there is not only one planet revolving around another and with it around the Sun, but as many as four traveling around Jupiter and with it around the Sun.” . In October 1610, Galileo made a new sensational discovery: he observed the phases of Venus. There could be only one explanation for this: the movement of the planet around the Sun and the change in the position of Venus and Earth relative to the Sun.
Objections arose against Galileo's astronomical discoveries. His opponents - German astrologer Martin Horky, Italian Colombe, Florentine Francesco Sizzi - put forward purely astrological and theological arguments that corresponded to the teachings of the “great Aristotle” and the views of the church. However, Galileo's discoveries were soon confirmed. The existence of Jupiter's moons was stated by Johannes Kepler; in November 1610 Peiresc in France began regular observations of them. And by the end of 1610, Galileo made another remarkable discovery: he saw dark spots on the Sun. They were also seen by other observers, in particular the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner, but the latter considered the spots to be small bodies orbiting the Sun. Galileo's statement that the spots should be on the very surface of the Sun contradicted Aristotle's ideas about absolute incorruptibility and immutability celestial bodies. The dispute with Scheiner quarreled Galileo with the Jesuit order. Discussions about the relationship of the Bible to astronomy, disputes over the Pythagorean (i.e. Copernican) teaching, and attacks by the embittered clergy against Galileo were used. Even at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany they began to treat the scientist colder. March 23, 1611 Galileo travels to Rome. Here was an influential center of Catholic learning, the so-called. Roman College. It consisted of Jesuit scientists, among whom were good mathematicians. The Jesuit Fathers themselves conducted astronomical observations. The Roman College confirmed, with some reservations, the validity of Galileo's telescopic observations, and for some time the scientist was left alone.
Upon returning to Florence, Galileo entered into another scientific debate - about the floating of bodies. At the suggestion of the Duke of Tuscany, he wrote a special treatise on this issue - Reasoning about bodies in water(Discorso intorno alle cose, che stanno in su l"aqua, 1612). In his work, Galileo substantiated Archimedes' law strictly mathematically and proved the fallacy of Aristotle's statement that the immersion of bodies in water depends on their shape. The Catholic Church, which supported the teachings of Aristotle, regarded Galileo's printed speech as an attack against the church. The scientist was also reminded of his adherence to the Copernican theory, which, according to the scholastics, did not correspond to the Holy Scriptures. Galileo responded with two letters that were clearly Copernican in nature. One of them - to Abbot Castelli (a student of Galileo) - served as the reason for a direct denunciation of Galileo to the Inquisition. In these letters, Galileo urged adherence to a literal interpretation of any passage of the Bible unless there was “clear evidence” from some other source that a literal interpretation leads to false conclusions. This final conclusion did not contradict the opinion expressed by the leading Roman theologian, Cardinal Bellarmine, that if “real proof” of the movement of the Earth were found, then changes would have to be made in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, no action was taken against Galileo. Nevertheless, rumors of a denunciation reached him, and in December 1615 he went to Rome. Galileo managed to defend himself from accusations of heresy: prelates and cardinals, even Pope Paul V himself, accepted him as a scientific celebrity. In the meantime, however, a blow was prepared for the teachings of Copernicus: on March 5, 1616, a decree of the Sacred Congregation for Matters of Faith was published, in which the teachings of Copernicus were declared heretical, and his writing On the rotation of the celestial spheres included in the Index of Banned Books. Galileo's name was not mentioned, but the Sacred Congregation instructed Bellarmine to "exhort" Galileo and impress upon him the need to abandon the view of Copernicus' theory as a real model, and not as a convenient mathematical abstraction. Galileo was forced to obey. From now on, he actually could not carry out any scientific work, since he did not think of this work within the framework of Aristotelian traditions. But Galileo did not resign himself and continued to carefully collect arguments in favor of the teachings of Copernicus. In 1632, after long ordeals, his wonderful work was published Dialogues about the two most important systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernican(Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo ptolemaico e copernicano). Consent to the publication of the book was given by Pope Urban VIII (a friend of Galileo, former cardinal Maffeo Barberini, who ascended the papal throne in 1623), and Galileo in the preface to the book, lulling the vigilance of censorship, stated that he only wanted to confirm the justice of the ban on the teachings of Copernicus. Galileo wrote his famous work in the form of conversations: three characters discuss various arguments in favor of two systems of the universe - geocentric and heliocentric. The author does not take the side of any of the interlocutors, but the reader is left in no doubt that the winner in the dispute is the Copernican.
Galileo's enemies, having read the book, immediately understood what exactly the author wanted to say. A few months after the book was published, an order was received from Rome to stop selling it. Galileo, at the request of the Inquisition, arrived in Rome in February 1633, where a trial began against him. He was found guilty of violating church prohibitions and sentenced to life imprisonment. On June 22, 1633, he was forced, on his knees, to publicly renounce the teachings of Copernicus. He was asked to sign an act of agreement never again to assert anything that could arouse suspicion of heresy. Given these expressions of submission and repentance, the tribunal commuted the imprisonment to house arrest, and Galileo remained a “prisoner of the Inquisition” for 9 years.
Galileo first lived in the house of his friend the Archbishop of Siena, where he continued his research on dynamics, and then returned to his villa near Florence. Here, despite the papal ban, he wrote a treatise Conversations and mathematical justifications of two new sciences concerning mechanics and the laws of fall(Discorsi e dimonstrazioni mathematiche intorno à due nuove scienze attenenti alla meccanica ed movimenti locali), which was published in Protestant Holland in 1638. Conversations similar in structure to Dialogues. They feature the same characters, one of whom is the personification of the old science, which does not fit into the framework of the science developed by Galileo and other advanced scientists of his era. This work summarized Galileo's thoughts on various problems of physics; it contained the basic principles of dynamics, which had a huge impact on the development of physical science as a whole. After the release Conversations Galileo made his last astronomical discovery - he discovered the libration of the Moon (small periodic rocking of the Moon relative to the center). In 1637, Galileo's vision began to deteriorate, and in 1638 he became completely blind. Surrounded by students (V. Viviani, E. Torricelli, etc.), he nevertheless continued to work on applications to Conversations and on some experimental problems. In 1641, Galileo's health deteriorated sharply; he died in Arcetri on January 8, 1642. In 1737, Galileo's last will was fulfilled - his ashes were transferred to Florence, to the Church of Santa Croce.
Galileo(Galilei) Galileo (1564-1642)
Italian scientist, one of the founders of natural science.
He made his first discovery - the law of pendulum oscillation - in his youth. From 1589 he lectured at the University of Pisa. In 1590, Galileo wrote a treatise “On Motion”, in which he made sharp objections to the views of Aristotle and discovered that the acceleration of free falling bodies does not depend on their mass. In 1592 he received the chair of the university in Padua.
Galileo's most important achievement in dynamics was the creation of the principle of relativity, which became the basis modern theory relativity. Having decisively abandoned Aristotle’s ideas about motion, Galileo came to the conclusion that motion (meaning only mechanical processes) is relative, that is, one cannot talk about motion without specifying in relation to which “body of reference” it occurs; the laws of motion are irrelevant, and therefore, being in a closed cabin (he figuratively wrote “in a closed room under the deck of a ship”), it is impossible to establish by any experiments whether this cabin is at rest or moving uniformly and rectilinearly (“without shocks,” as Galileo put it) ).
"Leaning" tower in Pisa. It was here that Galileo refuted Aristotle
Title page"Dialogues"
The first news of the invention of the telescope in Holland reached Venice already in 1609. Having become interested in this discovery, Galileo significantly improved the device. On January 7, 1610, a significant event occurred: pointing the constructed telescope (with approximately 30x magnification) at the sky, Galileo noticed three bright points near the planet Jupiter, these were the satellites of Jupiter (later Galileo discovered a fourth). By repeating observations at certain intervals, he became convinced that the satellites orbited Jupiter. This served as a clear model of the Keplerian system, of which Galileo’s thoughts and experience made him a convinced supporter.
The invention of the telescope made it possible to detect the phases of Venus and make sure that the Milky Way consists of a huge number of stars. Having discovered sunspots and observing their movement, Galileo correctly explained this by the rotation of the Sun. A study of the surface of the Moon showed that it is covered with mountains and pitted with craters. Even this cursory list would allow us to rank Galileo among the greatest astronomers, but his role was exceptional because he made a truly revolutionary revolution, laying the foundation for instrumental astronomy as a whole.
In the tenth years of the 17th century, persecution began. Galileo managed to defend his teaching, but not for long: after the publication of the “Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow” in 1632, where in the form of a conversation between three interlocutors an idea of the two main systems of the world of Ptolemy and Copernicus was given, he was ordered to appear in Rome. Interrogations and the threat of torture broke the sick scientist, and on June 22 in the monastery of St. Minerva Galileo renounces his views and brings public repentance. Now, for the rest of his life, he became a prisoner of the Inquisition and was forced to live in his villa Arcetri near Florence. And only in 1992, Pope John Paul II declared the decision of the Inquisition court erroneous and rehabilitated Galileo.
Galileo before the Inquisition
Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa to the musician Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati. In 1572, he and his family moved to Florence. In 1581 he began to study medicine at the University of Pisa. One of Galileo's teachers, Ostilio Ricci, supported the young man in his passion for mathematics and physics, which affected his future fate scientist.
Galileo was unable to graduate from university due to financial difficulties encountered by his father and was forced to return to Florence, where he continued to study science. In 1586, he completed work on the treatise “The Small Balances,” in which (following Archimedes) he described a device he had invented for hydrostatic weighing, and in the next work he gave a number of theorems regarding the center of gravity of paraboloids of revolution. Assessing the growth of the scientist's reputation, the Florentine Academy chose him as an arbiter in the dispute over how the topography of Dante's Inferno (1588) should be interpreted from a mathematical point of view. Thanks to the assistance of his friend Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte, Galileo received an honorary but poorly paid position as professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa.
Father's death in 1591 and extreme straits financial situation forced Galileo to look for a new job. In 1592, he received the chair of mathematics in Padua (in the possessions of the Venetian Republic). After spending eighteen years here, Galileo Galilei discovered the quadratic dependence of the falling path on time, established the parabolic trajectory of the projectile, and also made many other equally important discoveries.
In 1609, Galileo Galilei, based on the model of the first Dutch telescopes, made his telescope, capable of creating a three-fold zoom, and then designed a telescope with a thirty-fold zoom, magnifying one thousand times. Galileo became the first person to point a telescope at the sky; what he saw there meant a genuine revolution in the idea of space: the Moon turned out to be covered with mountains and depressions (previously the surface of the Moon was considered smooth), the Milky Way - consisting of stars (according to Aristotle - this is fiery evaporation like the tail of comets), Jupiter - surrounded by four satellites (their rotation around Jupiter was an obvious analogy to the rotation of the planets around the Sun). Galileo later added to these observations the discovery of the phases of Venus and sunspots. He published the results in a book that was published in 1610 called “The Starry Messenger.” The book brought Galileo European fame. The famous mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler responded enthusiastically to it; monarchs and high clergy showed great interest in Galileo’s discoveries. With their help, he received a new, more honorable and secure position - the post of court mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1611, Galileo visited Rome, where he was admitted to the scientific "Academia dei Lincei".
In 1613, he published an essay on sunspots, in which for the first time he clearly spoke out in favor of Copernicus' heliocentric theory.
However, to proclaim this in Italy at the beginning of the 17th century meant repeating the fate of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake. The central point of the controversy that arose was the question of how to combine facts proven by science with contradictory passages from Holy Scripture. Galileo believed that in such cases the biblical story should be understood allegorically. The Church attacked the theory of Copernicus, whose book “On the Rotation of the Heavenly Spheres” (1543), more than half a century after its publication, ended up on the list of prohibited publications. A decree on this appeared in March 1616, and a month earlier, the chief theologian of the Vatican, Cardinal Bellarmine, suggested that Galileo should no longer defend Copernicanism. In 1623, Maffeo Barberini, a friend of his youth and patron of Galileo, became Pope under the name of Urban VIII. At the same time, the scientist published his new job— “Assay Master,” which examines the nature of physical reality and methods of studying it. It was here that the famous saying of the scientist appeared: “The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics.”
In 1632, Galileo’s book “Dialogue on the Two Systems of the World, Ptolemaic and Copernican” was published, which was soon banned by the Inquisition, and the scientist himself was summoned to Rome, where his trial awaited him. In 1633, the scientist was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was replaced by house arrest, last years He spent his life constantly on his estate Arcetri near Florence. The circumstances of the case still remain unclear. Galileo was accused not simply of defending Copernicus’ theory (such an accusation is legally untenable, since the book passed papal censorship), but of violating the previously given ban of 1616 “not to discuss in any form” this theory.
In 1638, Galileo published his new book “Conversations and Mathematical Proofs” in Holland, in the Elsevier publishing house, where he outlined his thoughts on the laws of mechanics in a more mathematical and academic form, and the range of problems considered was very wide - from statics and resistance of materials to laws of motion of a pendulum and laws of fall. Until his death, Galileo did not stop his active creative work: he tried to use the pendulum as the main element of the clock mechanism (followed by Christian Huygens), a few months before he became completely blind, he discovered the vibration of the Moon, and, already completely blind, dictated the last thoughts regarding the theory of impact to his students - Vincenzo Viviani and Evangelista Torricelli.
In addition to his great discoveries in astronomy and physics, Galileo went down in history as the creator modern method experimentation. His idea was that in order to study a specific phenomenon, we must create some kind of ideal world (he called it al mondo di carta - “the world on paper”), in which this phenomenon would be extremely free from extraneous influences. This ideal world is subsequently the object of a mathematical description, and its conclusions are compared with the results of an experiment in which conditions are as close to ideal as possible.
Galileo died in Arcetri on January 8, 1642 after a debilitating fever. In his will, he asked to be buried in the family tomb in the Basilica of Santa Croce (Florence), but due to fears of opposition from the church, this was not done. The scientist’s last will was fulfilled only in 1737; his ashes were transported from Arcetri to Florence and buried with honors in the Church of Santa Croce next to Michelangelo.
In 1758 Catholic Church lifted the ban on most works supporting the Copernican theory, and in 1835 excluded the work “On the Rotation of the Celestial Spheres” from the index of prohibited books. In 1992, Pope John Paul II officially admitted that the church had made a mistake in condemning Galileo in 1633.
Galileo Galilei had three children born out of wedlock to the Venetian Marina Gamba. Only his son Vincenzo, who later became a musician, was recognized by the astronomer as his own in 1619. His daughters, Virginia and Livia, were sent to a monastery.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
Fortunately, the fires of the Inquisition had already died down in Europe at that time, and the scientist escaped with only the status of “prisoner of the Holy Inquisition.”
short biography
Galileo Galilei (November 15, 1564 – January 8, 1642) remained in history as a brilliant astronomer and physicist. He is recognized as the founder of exact natural science.
Being a native of the Italian city of Pisa, he received his education there - at the famous University of Pisa, studying in a medical specialty. However, after familiarizing himself with the works of Euclid and Archimedes, the future scientist became so interested in mechanics and geometry that he immediately decided to leave the university, devoting his entire future life to the natural sciences.
In 1589 Galileo became a professor at the University of Pisa. A few more years later he began working at the University of Padua, where he remained until 1610. He continued his further work as the court philosopher of Duke Cosimo II de' Medici, continuing to engage in research in the fields of physics, geometry and astronomy.
Discovery and legacy
His main discoveries are two principles of mechanics, which had a significant impact on the development of not only mechanics itself, but also physics in general. It's about about the fundamental Galilean principle of relativity for uniform and rectilinear movement, as well as the principle of constancy of gravity acceleration.
Based on the principle of relativity discovered by him, I. Newton created such a concept as an inertial frame of reference. The second principle helped him develop the concepts of inert and heavy masses.
Einstein actually managed to develop mechanical principle Galileo for everything physical processes, first of all, to the light, drawing conclusions about the nature and laws of time and space. And by combining the second Galilean principle, which he interpreted as the principle of the equivalence of inertial forces to gravitational forces, with the first he created general theory relativity.
In addition to these two principles, Galileo was responsible for the discovery of the following laws:
Constant period of oscillation;
Addition movements;
Inertia;
Free fall;
Body movements on an inclined plane;
Movement of a body thrown at an angle.
In addition to these basic fundamental discoveries, the scientist was involved in the invention and design of various applied devices. So, in 1609, using convex and concave lenses, he created a device that was an optical system - an analogue of a modern telescope. With the help of this device he created with his own hands, he began to explore the night sky. And he was very successful in this, finalizing the device in practice and making a full-fledged telescope for that time.
Thanks to own invention, Galileo soon managed to discover the phases of Venus, sunspots and many others. etc.
However, the scientist’s inquisitive mind did not stop at the successful use of the telescope. In 1610, after conducting experiments and changing the distances between the lenses, he invented the reverse version of the telescope - the microscope. The role of these two devices for modern science cannot be overstated. He also invented the thermoscope (1592) - an analogue of the modern thermometer. As well as many other useful devices and devices.
The scientist’s astronomical discoveries significantly influenced the scientific worldview as a whole. In particular, his conclusions and justifications resolved long disputes between supporters of the teachings of Copernicus and supporters of the systems developed by Ptolemy and Aristotle. The obvious arguments given showed that the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic systems were erroneous.
True, after such stunning evidence (1633), they immediately rushed to recognize the scientist as a heretic. Fortunately, the fires of the Inquisition had already died down in Europe at that time, and Galileo escaped with only the status of a “prisoner of the Holy Inquisition”, a ban on working in Rome (after and in Florence, as well as near it), as well as constant supervision of himself. But the scientist continued his relatively active work. And before the illness that caused loss of vision, he managed to complete another of his famous works, “Conversations and Mathematical Proofs Concerning Two New Branches of Science” (1637).