Astronomers - 02 - Galileo Galilee (1564-1642)

Galileo the famous Italian astronomer was born in the city of Pisa, Italy. His father was a poor scholar who taught music and mathematics in a school there.

From childhood Galileo was a talented boy interested in music, painting, and making scientific toys. He was a keen observer and an inquisitive person.

Galileo had his primary education at a hermitage school in Florence. After his secondary education he entered the University of Pisa. Yet he could not continue his education there due to financial difficulties and few other problems and hindrances created by others. It is reported that his new way of thinking, and the habit of challenging accepted notions and views made the teachers despise him. In fact they wished him out of the institution.

One evening he went to the village chapel and the caretaker there was lighting the candles in the chandelier that hung from the ceiling by a long chain. When the man released it the lamp naturally started swinging to and fro. Young Galileo observed its movements and noticed that it covered a shorter distance with each swing. Galileo saw that although the distance of the swing was becoming less and less, yet the time taken in each swing remained the same.

As there were no clocks those days he had no way to test his observation. He had known that the beat of human pulse was fairly regular. Immediately he felt his own pulse and then counted the number of beats for each swing. He found that his idea was correct and recorded his observation. Sixty years later, another talented man studied Galileo’s record, used his discovery and made the first clock with a swinging pendulum.

After successive discoveries Galileo gained recognition and he was recruited as a teacher first and next made the Professor of Mathematics, at the University of Pisa. In no time he became the most revered teacher there.

During the period he was at Pisa, he came across an old book respected by all for the so called “true knowledge” it embodied. The book said that if two bodies of different weight are allowed to fall simultaneously from the same height, the heavier body will hit the ground first.

He challenged the statement to be wrong. Galileo took two iron balls, one of 100 pounds and the other of 1 pound up the leaning tower of Pisa. Then he dropped them from there simultaneously. To the amazement of about a thousand of onlookers’ both the balls hit the ground below at the same time.

Galileo constructed the first telescope of the world. He observed many heavenly bodies through it. With this primitive instrument he discovered Jupiter and studied several other planets and stars in the Milky Way or Our Galaxy.

Galileo asserted the validity of many views expressed by Copernicus and supported them. The Polish astronomer had said that the Earth is not the centre of the Universe, but it is nearly a small member of the Solar System and a minute speck in the universe. It was Galileo who proved for the first time that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System and that the Earth revolves around the sun in an orbit.

His bold discoveries and announcements offended the churchmen of the day, because, he had disproved many age-old notions and beliefs cherished and respected by them without question.

They accused Galileo of heresy and put him in prison. Later the authorities consented to pardon him if only he declared that his statements were wrong.

The weak old man was put under such a pressure that he bowed before the judges at the court of inquisition or ‘The Holy Office’ and said “I am at your mercy. I recant all what I have said.” But it is reported that as Galileo came out of the court he whispered to a colleague who was at the exit, “Friend though I denied the facts before the numskulls there, the Earth surely revolves around the Sun and the Earth is not the centre of the universe.”