Galileo Galilei is the greatest thinker of the Renaissance, the founder of modern mechanics, physics and astronomy, a follower of ideas, a predecessor.
The future scientist was born in Italy, the city of Pisa on February 15, 1564. Father Vincenzo Galilei, who belonged to an impoverished family of aristocrats, played the lute and wrote treatises on music theory. Vincenzo was a member of the Florentine Camerata, whose members sought to revive the ancient Greek tragedy. The result of the activities of musicians, poets and singers was the creation of a new genre of opera at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries.
Mother Julia Ammannati led household and raised four children: the eldest Galileo, Virginia, Livia and Michelangelo. Younger son followed in his father's footsteps and subsequently became famous as a composer. When Galileo was 8 years old, the family moved to the capital of Tuscany, the city of Florence, where the Medici dynasty flourished, known for its patronage of artists, musicians, poets and scientists.
IN early age Galileo was sent to school at the Benedictine monastery of Vallombrosa. The boy showed abilities in drawing, learning languages and exact sciences. From his father, Galileo inherited an ear for music and an ability for composition, but the young man was truly attracted only to science.
Studies
At the age of 17, Galileo went to Pisa to study medicine at the university. The young man, in addition to basic subjects and medical practice, became interested in attending math classes. The young man discovered the world of geometry and algebraic formulas, which influenced Galileo’s worldview. During the three years that the young man studied at the university, he thoroughly studied the works of ancient Greek thinkers and scientists, and also became acquainted with the heliocentric theory of Copernicus.
After the expiration of the three-year period of stay in educational institution Galileo was forced to return to Florence due to lack of funds for further studies from his parents. The university management did not make concessions to the talented young man and did not give him the opportunity to complete the course and receive academic degree. But Galileo already had an influential patron, the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte, who admired Galileo's talents in the field of invention. The aristocrat petitioned the Tuscan Duke Ferdinand I de' Medici for his ward and secured a salary for the young man at the ruler's court.
University work
The Marquis del Monte helped the talented scientist get a teaching position at the University of Bologna. In addition to lectures, Galileo conducts fruitful scientific activities. The scientist studies issues of mechanics and mathematics. In 1689, the thinker returned to the University of Pisa for three years, but now as a teacher of mathematics. In 1692, he moved to the Venetian Republic, the city of Padua, for 18 years.
Combining teaching work at a local university with scientific experiments, Galileo publishes the books “On Motion”, “Mechanics”, where he refutes the ideas. During these same years, one of the important events- a scientist invents a telescope that makes it possible to observe the life of celestial bodies. The astronomer described the discoveries made by Galileo using a new instrument in his treatise “The Starry Messenger”.
Returning to Florence in 1610, under the care of the Tuscan Duke Cosimo de' Medici II, Galileo published the work Letters on Sunspots, which was critically received by the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Inquisition acted on a large scale. And the followers of Copernicus were among the zealots Christian faith on a special account.
In 1600, he was already executed at the stake, who never renounced his own views. Therefore, Catholics considered the works of Galileo Galilei provocative. The scientist himself considered himself an exemplary Catholic and did not see a contradiction between his works and the Christocentric picture of the world. The astronomer and mathematician considered the Bible to be a book promoting the salvation of the soul, and not at all a scientific educational treatise.
In 1611, Galileo went to Rome to demonstrate the telescope to Pope Paul V. The scientist carried out the presentation of the device as correctly as possible and even received the approval of the capital's astronomers. But the scientist’s request to make a final decision on the issue of the heliocentric system of the world decided his fate in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The papists declared Galileo a heretic, and the indictment process began in 1615. The concept of heliocentrism was officially declared false by the Roman Commission in 1616.
Philosophy
The main postulate of Galileo's worldview is the recognition of the objectivity of the world, regardless of human subjective perception. The Universe is eternal and infinite, initiated by a divine first impulse. Nothing in space disappears without a trace, only a change in the form of matter occurs. At the core material world lies the mechanical movement of particles, by studying which one can understand the laws of the universe. Therefore, scientific activity must be based on experience and sensory knowledge of the world. Nature, according to Galileo, is the true subject of philosophy, by comprehending which one can get closer to the truth and fundamental principle of all things.
Galileo was an adherent of two methods of natural science - experimental and deductive. Using the first method, the scientist sought to prove hypotheses, the second involved a consistent movement from one experience to another, in order to achieve completeness of knowledge. In his work, the thinker relied primarily on teaching. While criticizing the views, Galileo did not reject the analytical method used by the philosopher of antiquity.
Astronomy
Thanks to the telescope invented in 1609, which was created using a convex lens and a concave eyepiece, Galileo began observing the celestial bodies. But the threefold magnification of the first instrument was not enough for the scientist to carry out full-fledged experiments, and soon the astronomer created a telescope with a 32x magnification of objects.
Galileo Galilei's inventions: telescope and first compass The first luminary that Galileo studied in detail using the new instrument was the Moon. The scientist discovered many mountains and craters on the surface of the Earth's satellite. The first discovery confirmed that the Earth physical properties no different from other celestial bodies. This was the first refutation of Aristotle’s assertion about the difference between earthly and heavenly natures.
The second major discovery in the field of astronomy concerned the discovery of four satellites of Jupiter, which in the 20th century was confirmed by numerous space photos. Thus, he refuted the arguments of Copernicus’s opponents that if the Moon revolves around the Earth, then the Earth cannot revolve around the Sun. Galileo, due to the imperfections of the first telescopes, was unable to establish the rotation period of these satellites. The final proof of the rotation of Jupiter's moons was put forward 70 years later by the astronomer Cassini.
Galileo discovered the presence of sunspots, which he observed for a long time. Having studied the star, Galileo concluded that the Sun rotates around its own axis. Observing Venus and Mercury, the astronomer determined that the orbits of the planets are closer to the Sun than the Earth's. Galileo discovered the rings of Saturn and even described the planet Neptune, but he was unable to fully advance these discoveries due to imperfect technology. Observing the stars of the Milky Way through a telescope, the scientist became convinced of their immense quantity.
Experimentally and empirically, Galileo proves that the Earth rotates not only around the Sun, but also around its own axis, which further strengthened the astronomer in the correctness of the Copernican hypothesis. In Rome, after a hospitable reception at the Vatican, Galileo became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, which was founded by Prince Cesi.
Mechanics
The basis of the physical process in nature, according to Galileo, is mechanical movement. The scientist viewed the Universe as a complex mechanism consisting of the simplest causes. Therefore, mechanics has become the cornerstone in scientific activity Galilee. Galileo made many discoveries in the field of mechanics itself, and also determined the directions of future discoveries in physics.
The scientist was the first to establish the law of fall and confirm it empirically. Galileo discovered the physical formula for the flight of a body moving at an angle to a horizontal surface. The parabolic motion of the thrown object had important for calculating artillery tables.
Galileo formulated the law of inertia, which became the fundamental axiom of mechanics. Another discovery was the substantiation of the principle of relativity for classical mechanics, as well as the calculation of the formula for oscillation of pendulums. Based on this latest research, the first pendulum clock was invented in 1657 by the physicist Huygens.
Galileo was the first to pay attention to the resistance of material, which gave impetus to the development of independent science. The scientist’s reasoning subsequently formed the basis of the laws of physics on the conservation of energy in a gravitational field and the moment of force.
Mathematics
In his mathematical judgments, Galileo came close to the idea of probability theory. The scientist outlined his own research on this matter in the treatise “Reflections on the Game of Dice,” which was published 76 years after the author’s death. Galileo became the author of the famous mathematical paradox about natural numbers and their squares. Galileo recorded his calculations in his work “Conversations on Two New Sciences.” The developments formed the basis of the theory of sets and their classification.
Conflict with the Church
After 1616, a turning point in scientific biography Galileo, he was forced into the shadows. The scientist was afraid to express his own ideas explicitly, so the only book Galileo published after Copernicus was declared a heretic was the 1623 work “The Assayer.” After the change of power in the Vatican, Galileo perked up; he believed that the new Pope Urban VIII would be more favorable to Copernican ideas than his predecessor.
But after the polemical treatise “Dialogue on the Two Main Systems of the World” appeared in print in 1632, the Inquisition again initiated proceedings against the scientist. The story with the accusation repeated itself, but this time it ended much worse for Galileo.
Personal life
While living in Padua, young Gallileo met a citizen of the Venetian Republic, Marina Gamba, who became common-law wife scientist. Three children were born into Galileo's family - son Vincenzo and daughters Virginia and Livia. Since the children were born outside of marriage, the girls subsequently had to become nuns. At the age of 55, Galileo managed to legitimize only his son, so the young man was able to marry and give his father a grandson, who later, like his aunt, became a monk.
Galileo Galilei was outlawed After the Inquisition outlawed Galileo, he moved to a villa in Arcetri, which was located not far from the daughters' monastery. Therefore, quite often Galileo could see his favorite, eldest daughter Virginia until her death in 1634. The younger Livia did not visit her father due to illness.
Death
As a result of a short-term imprisonment in 1633, Galileo renounced the idea of heliocentrism and was placed under permanent arrest. The scientist was placed under home protection in the city of Arcetri with restrictions on communication. Galileo stayed in the Tuscan villa without leaving until last days life. The genius's heart stopped on January 8, 1642. At the time of death, two students were next to the scientist - Viviani and Torricelli. During the 30s, it was possible to publish the last works of the thinker - “Dialogues” and “Conversations and mathematical proofs concerning two new branches of science” in Protestant Holland.
Tomb of Galileo Galilei After his death, Catholics forbade burying Galileo's ashes in the crypt of the Basilica of Santa Croce, where the scientist wanted to rest. Justice triumphed in 1737. From now on, Galileo's grave is located next to. Another 20 years later, the church rehabilitated the idea of heliocentrism. Galileo had to wait much longer for his acquittal. The error of the Inquisition was only recognized in 1992 by Pope John Paul II.
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 he received his 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.
But first he wanted to devote his life to medicine, entering the University of Pisa in 1581. However, after reading the works of Archimedes and Euclid, he left the university and studied mathematics on his own for four years.
- Already in 1582, observing pendulums, Galileo discovered the law of isochronism - the independence of the period of oscillation of a pendulum from the swing of oscillations and the mass of the load - and put forward the idea of using pendulums in clocks.
- Applying mathematics not only to mechanics, but also to hydrostatics, he invented hydrostatic balances in 1586, which were used in weighing precious metals and their alloys.
Over the next 20 years, he experimentally and theoretically established the basic principles of mechanics. First of all, this is the principle of relativity for rectilinear and uniform motion and the principle of constancy of acceleration under the influence of gravity. The first principle later led to the concept of an inertial frame of reference, and the second to the concept of inertial mass. And, having extended Galileo’s principle of relativity to everything physical processes(in particular, to light) and interpreting its second principle as the equivalence of the forces of inertia and gravity, created general theory relativity.
Photo: ru.wikipedia.org
In 1609, Galileo created his first telescope and began systematic astronomical observations. He discovers mountains on the Moon, four satellites of Jupiter.
Discovers that the Milky Way is made up of many stars. Reveals the sunspot and its rotation, the phases of Venus. These astronomical discoveries brought Galileo and his telescope such wide popularity that he even started producing telescopes. And in 1610−14, combining and selecting the distance between lenses, he invented the microscope. These two devices served in subsequent centuries a powerful weapon scientific research.
And Galileo himself investigated the nature of light, color, and dealt with issues of physical optics. He formulated the idea of the finite speed of light propagation and conducted experiments to determine it.
Photo:
Galileo’s astronomical discoveries were summarized by him in his treatise, “Dialogue on the Two Major Systems of the World,” published in 1632, which practically confirmed the correctness of the doctrine of the heliocentric system of the world. This book infuriated the churchmen.
The Inquisition banned the book, and in 1633 Galileo himself was forced to renounce his views and excommunicated. In the same church where in 1600 he was sentenced to burning, having never renounced his views, Galileo, kneeling, pronounced the text of renunciation offered to him. 
Photo: ru.wikipedia.org
Galileo Galilei died on January 8, 1642 at the age of 78. He was buried without honors or a gravestone. In 1737, 95 years later, his ashes were transferred to Florence, to the Church of Santa Croce. And in 1992, only 350 years after the death of Galileo, Pope John Paul II, after the work of a special commission, recognized the heliocentric system of the world and dropped the charges against.
“ShkolaLa” welcomes all its readers who want to know a lot.
Once upon a time everyone thought like this:
The earth is a flat, huge nickel,
But one man took the telescope,
Opened the way for us to the space age.
Who do you think this is?
Among the world-famous scientists is Galileo Galilei. In which country you were born and how you studied, what you discovered and what you became famous for - these are the questions to which we will look for answers today.
Lesson plan:
Where are future scientists born?
The poor family where little Galileo Galilei was born in 1564 lived in the Italian city of Pisa.
The father of the future scientist was a real master in different areas, from mathematics to art history, so it is not at all surprising that since childhood, young Galileo fell in love with painting and music and gravitated toward the exact sciences.
When the boy turned eleven, the family from Pisa, where Galileo lived, moved to another city in Italy - Florence.
There he began his studies in a monastery, where the young student demonstrated brilliant abilities in the study of sciences. He even thought about a career as a clergyman, but his father did not approve of his choice, wanting his son to become a doctor. That is why, at seventeen, Galileo moved to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Pisa and began to diligently study philosophy, physics and mathematics.
However, he was unable to graduate from university for a simple reason: his family could not pay for his further education. Having left the third year, student Galileo begins self-education in the field of physical and mathematical sciences.
Thanks to his friendship with the wealthy Marquis del Monte, the young man managed to obtain a paid scientific position as a teacher of astronomy and mathematics at the University of Pisa.
During his university work, he conducted various experiments, the result of which were the laws of free fall, the movement of a body on an inclined plane and the force of inertia that he discovered.
Since 1606, the scientist has been closely involved in astronomy.
Interesting Facts! Full name scientist - Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de Galilei.
About mathematics, mechanics and physics
They say that, as a professor at the university in the town of Pisa, Galileo conducted experiments by dropping objects of different weights from a height Leaning Tower of Pisa to refute Aristotle's theory. Even in some textbooks you can find such a picture.
Only these experiments are not mentioned anywhere in Galileo’s works. Most likely, as researchers today believe, this is a myth.
But the scientist rolled objects along an inclined plane, measuring time by his own heart pulse. There were no accurate clocks back then! These very experiments were put into the laws of motion of bodies.
Galileo was credited with inventing the thermometer in 1592. The device was then called a thermoscope, and it was completely primitive. A thin glass tube was soldered to the glass ball. This structure was placed in liquid. The air in the ball heated up and displaced the liquid in the tube. The higher the temperature, the more air in the ball and the lower the water level in the tube.
In 1606, an article appeared where Galileo laid out a drawing of a proportional compass. This is a simple tool that converted measured dimensions to scale and was used in architecture and drafting.
Galileo is credited with the invention of the microscope. In 1609, he made a “small eye” with two lenses - convex and concave. Using his invention, the scientist examined insects.
With his research, Galileo laid the foundations of classical physics and mechanics. Thus, on the basis of his conclusions about inertia, Newton subsequently established the first law of mechanics, according to which any body is at rest or moves uniformly in the absence of external forces.
His studies of pendulum oscillations formed the basis for the invention of the clock with a pendulum regulator and made it possible to make precise measurements in physics.
Interesting Facts! Galileo not only excelled in the natural sciences, but was also creative person: He knew literature very well and wrote poetry.
About astronomical discoveries that shocked the world
In 1609, a scientist heard a rumor about the existence of a device that could help view distant objects by collecting light. If you already guessed, it was called a telescope, which is translated from Greek as “look far away.”
For his invention, Galileo modified the telescope with lenses, and this device was capable of magnifying objects by 3 times. Time after time, he assembled a new combination of several telescopes, and it gave more and more magnification. As a result, Galileo’s “visionary” began to zoom in 32 times.
What discoveries in the field of astronomy belonged to Galileo Galilei and made him famous throughout the world, becoming real sensations? How did his invention help the scientist?
- Galileo Galilei told everyone that this is a planet comparable to the Earth. He saw plains, craters and mountains on its surface.
- Thanks to the telescope, Galileo discovered four satellites of Jupiter, today called “Galilean”, and appeared to everyone in the form of a strip, crumbling into many stars.
- By placing smoked glass at the telescope, the scientist was able to examine it, see spots on it and prove to everyone that it was the Earth that revolved around it, and not vice versa, as Aristotle believed and religion and the Bible said.
- He was the first to see the surroundings, which he took for satellites, today known to us as rings, found different phases of Venus and made it possible to observe previously unknown stars.
Galileo Galilei combined his discoveries in the book “Star Messenger”, confirming the hypothesis that our planet is mobile and rotates around an axis, and the sun does not revolve around us, which caused the condemnation of the church. His work was called heresy, and the scientist himself lost his freedom of movement and was placed under house arrest.
Interesting Facts! It is quite surprising for our developed world that it was only in 1992 that the Vatican and the Pope recognized that Galileo was right about the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. Until that time Catholic Church I was sure that the opposite was happening: our planet is motionless, and the Sun “walks” around us.
This is how you can briefly tell about the life of an outstanding scientist who gave impetus to the development of astronomy, physics and mathematics.
A famous science and entertainment television program was named after Galileo Galilei. The host of this program, Alexander Pushnoy, and his colleagues conducted all sorts of different experiments and tried to explain what they did. I suggest watching an excerpt from this wonderful program right now.
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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, the Catholic Church lifted the ban on most works supporting the Copernican theory, and in 1835 it excluded 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