February 15 marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of the great Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer and philosopher Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), one of the founders of modern science. We have prepared a story about 14 interesting facts about the life and scientific work of the founder of experimental physics, with whom modern physics began in the 17th century.
1. The Inquisition tried Galileo for his book on the Sun and Earth
Domenico Tintoretto. Galileo Galilei. 1605-1607
The reason for the inquisition process in 1633 was Galileo’s just published book “Dialogue on the two greatest systems of the world, Ptolemy and Copernicus,” where he proved the truth of heliocentrism and argued with peripatetic (i.e., Aristotelian physics), as well as with the Ptolemaic system, according to in which the motionless Earth is located at the center of the world. The Catholic Church then adhered to this idea of the structure of the world.
The main complaint of the Inquisition against Galileo was his confidence in the objective truth heliocentric system peace. Moreover, the Catholic Church for a long time had nothing against Copernicanism, provided that it would be treated simply as a hypothesis or mathematical assumption that simply allows us to better describe the world(“save phenomena”), without claiming objective truth and reliability. Only in 1616, more than 70 years after its publication, Copernicus’s book “De revolutionibus” (“On Conversions”) was included in the “Index of Prohibited Books.”
2. Galileo was accused of diminishing the authority of the Bible
Giuseppe Bertini. Galileo shows the telescope to the Doge of Venice. 1858
The Inquisition accused Galileo of exceeding the powers of reason and belittling authority Holy Scripture. Galileo was a rationalist who believed in the power of reason in the knowledge of nature: reason, according to Galileo, knows the truth “with the certainty that nature itself has.” The Catholic Church believed that any scientific theory is only hypothetical in nature and cannot achieve perfect knowledge of the secrets of the universe. Galileo was sure of the opposite: “... the human mind knows some truths as completely and with the same absolute certainty as nature itself has: these are pure mathematical sciences, geometry and arithmetic; although the Divine mind knows in them infinitely more truths... but in those few that the human mind has comprehended, I think its knowledge is equal in objective certainty to the Divine, for it comes to understand their necessity, and highest degree there is no certainty.”
According to Galileo, in the event of a conflict in the matter of knowledge of nature with any other authority, including even with the Holy Scriptures, reason should not yield: “It seems to me that when discussing natural problems we should start not from the authority of the texts of the Holy Scriptures, but from sensory experiences and the necessary evidence... I believe that everything concerning the actions of nature that is accessible to our eyes or can be understood through logical evidence should not raise doubts, much less be condemned on the basis of the texts of Holy Scripture, perhaps even misunderstood. God reveals himself to us no less in natural phenomena than in the sayings of Holy Scripture... It would be dangerous to attribute to Holy Scripture any judgment that has been at least once challenged by experience.”
3. Galileo considered himself a good Catholic
Giovanni Lorenzo Bertini. Pope Urban VIII. OK. 1625
Galileo himself considered himself a faithful son catholic church and did not intend to enter into conflict with her. Initially, Pope Urban VIII patronized Galileo and his scientific research for a long time. They were on good terms even when the Pope was Cardinal Matteo Barberini. But by the time of the inquisitorial trial of the great physicist, Urban VIII had suffered a series of serious failures, he was accused of a political alliance with the Protestant king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolf, against Catholic Spain and Austria. Also, the authority of the Catholic Church was seriously undermined by the Reformation that was going on at that time. Against this background, when Urban VIII was informed about Galileo’s “Dialogue,” the annoyed pope even believed that one of the participants in the dialogue, the Aristotelian Simplicio, whose arguments were smashed to smithereens during the conversation, was a caricature of himself. The pope's anger was combined with calculation: the inquisition process was supposed to demonstrate the unbroken spirit of the Catholic Church and the Counter-Reformation.
4. Galileo was not tortured, but he was threatened with torture.
Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury. Galileo before the Inquisition. 1847
Galileo was threatened with torture during his 1633 trial if he did not recant his “heretical” belief that the Earth moved around the Sun. Some historians still think that Galileo may have been tortured on a “moderate scale,” but most are inclined to believe that there was none. He was threatened with torture in words (territio verbalis), without intimidation through the actual demonstration of torture instruments (territio realis). However, Galileo resolutely renounced the teachings of Copernicus, and there was no need to torture him. The final formula of the sentence left Galileo "under strong suspicion of heresy" and ordered him to purify himself by renunciation. His “Dialogue on the Two Greatest Systems of the World” was included in the “Index of Prohibited Books” by the Catholic Church, and Galileo himself was also sentenced to a prison term to be set by the Pope.
In general, in the story of Galileo, the Catholic Church in in a certain sense behaved quite moderately. During the trial in Rome, Galileo lived with the Florentine ambassador at the Villa Medici. Living conditions there were far from prison-like. After his abdication, Galileo immediately returned (the pope did not keep Galileo in prison) to the villa of the Tuscan Duke in Rome, and then later moved to his friend, the Archbishop of Siena, his friend Ascanio Piccolomini and settled in his palace.
5. The Inquisition burned not Galileo, but Giordano Bruno
In this regard, let us clarify, as in the case of Copernicus, that the Inquisition burned not Galileo at the stake, but Giordano Bruno.
This Italian Dominican monk, philosopher and poet, was burned in Rome in 1600 not just for his belief in the truth of the Copernican system of the world. Bruno was a conscious and persistent heretic (which, perhaps, does not justify, but at least somehow explains the actions of the Inquisition). Here is the text of the denunciation that his student, the young Venetian aristocrat Giovanni Mocenigo, sent against Bruno to the Inquisition: “I, Giovanni Mocenigo, denounce out of conscience and by order of my confessor, which I heard many times from Giordano Bruno when I talked with him in my house, that the world is eternal and there are infinite worlds... that Christ performed imaginary miracles and was a magician, that Christ did not die of his own free will and, as far as he could, tried to avoid death; that there is no retribution for sins; that souls created by nature pass from one living being to another. He talked about his intention to become the founder of a new sect called "new philosophy." He said that the Virgin Mary could not give birth; monks disgrace the world; that they are all donkeys; that we have no proof whether our faith has merit before God.”
For six years Giordano Bruno was imprisoned in Rome, refusing to admit his beliefs were a mistake. When Bruno was sentenced to be subjected to “the most merciful punishment and without shedding of blood” (burning alive), the philosopher and heretic responded by telling the judges: “To burn does not mean to refute!”
6. Galileo did not utter the famous phrase “But still it turns!”
What Galileo allegedly said famous phrase“But still she spins!” (Eppur si muove!) immediately after his abdication is just a beautiful legend created by the Italian poet, publicist and literary critic Giuseppe Baretti in the mid-18th century. It is not confirmed by any documentary data.
In fact, Galileo ended his renunciation in the Roman church of Sancta Maria sopra Minerva (“Holy Mary triumphs over Athena Minerva”) on June 22, 1633 with the following words: “I have composed and printed a book in which I treat this condemned doctrine and bring it into its favor strong arguments, without giving their final refutation, as a result of this, I am recognized by this holy court as highly suspected of heresy, as if I adhere and believe that the Sun is the center of the world and is motionless, while the Earth is not the center and moves. And therefore, wishing to expel from the thoughts of your Eminences, as well as from the mind of every devoted Christian, this strong suspicion, legitimately aroused against me, from a pure heart and with unfeigned faith I renounce, curse, declare hateful the above-mentioned errors and heresies, and in general all and any contrary the above-mentioned holy church of errors, heresies and sectarian teachings."
7. Galileo invented the telescope
Galileo was the first to use a telescope (spotting scope) to observe the sky. The discoveries he made in 1609-1610 constituted a real milestone in astronomy. Using a telescope, Galileo is the first to discover that the Milky Way is a gigantic cluster of stars and that Jupiter has satellites. These were the four largest satellites of Jupiter - Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto, nicknamed Galilean in honor of their discoverer (today astronomers count the largest planet solar system 67 satellites).
Galileo saw through the telescope the uneven, hilly surface of the Moon, mountains and craters on its surface. He also observes sunspots, the phases of Venus and sees Saturn with three faces (what he at first also mistook for Saturn’s satellites turned out to be the edges of its famous rings).
8. Galileo proved Aristotle wrong in his views on the Earth and the Moon and changed man’s ideas about the Earth and space.
Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury. Galileo before the Inquisition.
There have been very few events in the history of science that are similar to this series of discoveries in terms of the public resonance it caused and the impact on people's thinking. Before Galileo, Aristotelianism occupied the dominant position in European science and culture. According to Aristotelian physics, there was a radical difference between the supralunar and sublunar worlds. If “under the moon”, in earthly world everything is perishable and subject to change and death, then in the supralunar world, in the sky, according to Aristotle, ideal patterns reign, and all celestial bodies are eternal and perfect, ideally smooth. The discoveries of Galileo, in particular, the contemplation of the uneven, hilly surface of the Moon, were one of the decisive steps towards understanding that the entire cosmos or the world as a whole is structured the same, that the same patterns apply everywhere in it.
By the way, it is interesting to note the significant difference between the impression that the contemplation of the Moon made on Galileo’s contemporaries and that it makes on us today. Our contemporary, looking through a telescope at the Moon, is struck by how different the Moon is from the Earth: he, first of all, pays attention to the somewhat dull, gray and waterless surface. In the time of Galileo, on the contrary, people were surprised at how similar the Moon turned out to be to the Earth. For us, the idea of a physical relationship between the Earth and the Moon has already become trivial. For Galileo, the ridges and craters on the Moon were a clear refutation of the Aristotelian opposition celestial bodies and Earth.
10. Galileo changed our ideas about space and the movement of bodies
The main idea of Galileo's scientific work was the idea of the world as an ordered system of bodies that move one relative to another in a homogeneous space, devoid of privileged directions or points. For example, what is considered top or bottom, according to Galileo, depends on the chosen frame of reference. In Aristotelian physics, the world was a limited space, where up or down was clearly distinguished. All bodies either rested in their “natural places” or moved towards them. Homogeneity of space, relativity of motion - these were the principles of the new scientific picture of the world laid down by Galileo. In addition, for Aristotle, rest was more important and better than movement: with him the body, which was not acted upon by forces, is always at rest. Galileo introduced the principle of inertia (if no forces act on a body, it is at rest or moves uniformly), which equalized rest and motion. Now motion at a constant speed does not require a reason. This was the greatest revolution in the doctrine of movement, which marked the beginning new science. Galileo considered the question of the finitude or infinity of the world insoluble.
11. Galileo was the first to combine physics with mathematics
Galileo's most important innovation in science was his desire to mathematize physics, to describe the world around him not in the language of qualities, as in Aristotelian physics, but in the language of mathematics. Galileo wrote: “I will never become external bodies require something other than size, figure, quantity and more or less rapid movements in order to explain the occurrence of the sensations of taste, smell and sound. I think that if we eliminated the ears, tongues, noses, then only figures, numbers, movements would remain, but not smells, tastes and sounds, which, in my opinion, outside a living being are nothing more than empty opinion.” . And when the famous physicist, laureate Nobel Prize in physics 1979 Steven Weinberg says that the essence of modern physics is a quantitative understanding of phenomena, it is important to know that the basis for this was laid by Galileo Galilei in his experiments on measuring the movement of stones falling from the top of a tower, balls rolling on an inclined plane, etc.
12. Galileo's physics is based on ideas that cannot be tested.
Galileo is considered the founder of experimental natural science, when science turns from purely logical, speculative theorizing to direct observation of nature and experimentation with it. Meanwhile, the reader of Galileo's works is struck by how often he resorts to thought experiments. They have the ability to prove their truth even before their actual implementation. Galileo seemed to be convinced of their truth even before any experiment.
This suggests that classical physics, the foundation of which was laid by Galileo, is not an unpremised and therefore the only true observation of nature “as it is.” It itself rests on certain fundamental speculative assumptions. After all, the foundations of Galileo’s physics are built from fundamentally unobservable elements: infinite inertial motion, the motion of a material point in emptiness, the motion of the Earth, etc. It was precisely Aristotelian physics that was closer to immediate evidence: the difference between up and down in space, the movement of the Sun around the Earth, the rest of a body if external forces do not act on it, etc.
13. Galileo’s trial proved that the objects of faith and science cannot be mixed
Galileo's case caused big damage the authority of the Catholic Church. Her mistake was that the idea from scientific theories, created, by the way, by pagans. After all, Aristotle’s physics, like Ptolemy’s system, is a legacy of antiquity. But the doctrine of the motion of the earth cannot be a theological question. Dogmas must concern areas of faith where science has no access. For example, in the “Creed” there is not a single definition that could be confirmed or refuted scientifically.
14. The Church admitted its mistakes in the Galileo case
In 1758, Pope Benedict XIV ordered works that defended heliocentrism to be removed from the Index of Prohibited Books. This work was carried out slowly and was completed only in 1835.
Voices about the need to rehabilitate Galileo were heard at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Later, Pope John Paul II took up the rehabilitation of Galileo. In 1989, Cardinal Poupard stated regarding the condemnation of Galileo: “In condemning Galileo, the Holy Office acted sincerely, fearing that recognition of the Copernican revolution would threaten Catholic tradition. But it was a mistake, and it must be honestly admitted. Today we know that Galileo was right in defending the Copernican theory, although the debate over his arguments continues to this day.”
Biography of Galileo
Galileo was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa (a city near Florence) in the family of a well-born but impoverished nobleman, Vincenzo Galil, a music theorist and lutenist. Galileo's family was from Florence, belonging to its richest bourgeois families who ruled the city. One of Galileo’s great-great-grandfathers was even a “standard bearer of justice” (gofaloniere di giustizia), the head of the Florentine Republic, as well as a famous doctor and scientist.
In Pisa, Galileo Galilei graduated from the university, here his first scientific research took place, and here he took the chair of mathematics at the age of 25.
When Galileo lived in Padua (1592-1610), he entered into an unmarried marriage with the Venetian Marina Gamba and became the father of a son and two daughters. Later, in 1619, Galileo officially legitimized his son. Both daughters ended their lives in a monastery, where they went because, due to their illegitimacy, they could not count on a successful marriage and a good dowry.
In 1610, he moved to Florence to the Tuscan Duke Cosimo de' Medici II, who gave him a good salary as his adviser at court. This helps Galileo pay off the huge debts he had accumulated due to the marriage of his two sisters.
Galileo spent the last nine years of his life under the supervision of the Inquisition, which limited his scientific contacts and movements. He settled in Arcetri next to the convent where his daughters were, and was forbidden to visit other cities. Nevertheless, Galileo still studied scientific research. When he died on January 8, 1642, in the arms of his disciples Viviani and Torricelli, Pope Urban VIII prohibited a solemn funeral, and Cardinal Francesco Barberini (the pope's nephew) sent the following message to the papal nuncio in Florence: “His Holiness, in agreement with the Eminences I have indicated, has decided that You, with your usual skill, will be able to convey to the attention of the Duke that it is not good to build a mausoleum for the corpse of one who was punished by the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition and died while serving this punishment, for this would cause confusion good people and injure their confidence in his Highness's piety. But, if you still fail to dissuade the Grand Duke from such a plan, you will need to warn that the epitaph or inscription that will be on the monument should not contain such expressions that could affect the reputation of this tribunal. And you will need to give the same warning to the person who will read the funeral speech...”
Many years later, in 1737, Galileo was nevertheless buried in the tomb of Santa Croce next to Michelangelo, as was originally intended to be done.
GALILEO(Galilei),Galileo
Italian physicist, mechanic and astronomer, one of the founders of natural science, poet, philologist and critic Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa into a noble but impoverished Florentine family. His father, Vincenzo, a famous musician, provided big influence on the development and formation of Galileo’s abilities. Until the age of 11, Galileo lived in Pisa, attended school there, then the family moved to Florence. Galileo received further education at the Vallombrosa monastery, where he was accepted as a novice into the monastic order.
Here he became acquainted with the works of Latin and Greek writers. Under the pretext of a serious eye illness, the father took his son from the monastery. At the insistence of his father, in 1581 Galileo entered the University of Pisa, where he studied medicine. Here he first became acquainted with Aristotle's physics, which from the very beginning seemed unconvincing to him. Galileo turned to reading the ancient mathematicians - Euclid and Archimedes. Archimedes became his real teacher. Fascinated by geometry and mechanics, Galileo abandoned medicine and returned to Florence, where he spent 4 years studying mathematics. The result of this period of Galileo's life was the small work “Little Balances” (1586, published 1655), which describes the hydrostatic balances Galileo built for quickly determining the composition of metal alloys, and geometric study about the centers of gravity of bodily figures.
These works brought Galileo his first fame among Italian mathematicians. In 1589 he received the chair of mathematics in Pisa, continuing his scientific work. His “Dialogue on Movement,” written in Pisa and directed against Aristotle, has been preserved in manuscripts. Some of the conclusions and argumentation in this work are erroneous, and Galileo subsequently abandoned them. But already here, without naming the name of Copernicus, Galileo gives arguments refuting Aristotle’s objections to the daily rotation of the Earth.
In 1592, Galileo took the chair of mathematics in Padua. The Padua period of Galileo's life (1592–1610) is the time of the highest flowering of his activity. During these years, his static studies on machines arose, where he proceeded from the general principle of equilibrium, coinciding with the principle of possible movements, and his main dynamic works on the laws of free fall of bodies, on falling along an inclined plane, on the movement of a body thrown at an angle to the horizon, matured. , about the isochronism of pendulum oscillations. Research on the strength of materials and the mechanics of animal bodies dates back to the same period; Finally, in Padua, Galileo became a completely convinced follower of Copernicus. However scientific work Galilee remained hidden from everyone except friends. Galileo's lectures were given according to the traditional program, they presented the teachings of Ptolemy. In Padua, Galileo published only a description of a proportional compass, which made it possible to quickly carry out various calculations and constructions.
In 1609, based on the information that reached him about the telescope invented in Holland, Galileo built his first telescope, giving approximately 3x magnification. The operation of the telescope was demonstrated from the tower of St. The stamp was in Venice and made a huge impression. Galileo soon built a telescope with a magnification of 32 times. Observations made with its help destroyed Aristotle’s “ideal spheres” and the dogma of the perfection of celestial bodies: the surface of the Moon turned out to be covered with mountains and pitted with craters, the stars lost their apparent size and their colossal distance was understood for the first time. Jupiter discovered 4 satellites, and a huge number of new stars became visible in the sky. The Milky Way broke up into individual stars. Galileo described his observations in the work “The Starry Messenger” (1610–1611), which made a stunning impression. At the same time, a fierce controversy began. Galileo was accused of the fact that everything he saw was an optical illusion, and it was argued simply that his observations contradicted Aristotle, and therefore were erroneous.
Astronomical discoveries served as a turning point in Galileo’s life: he was freed from teaching and, at the invitation of Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici, moved to Florence. Here he becomes the court "philosopher" and "first mathematician" of the university, without the obligation to lecture.
Continuing telescopic observations, Galileo discovered the phases of Venus, sunspots and the rotation of the Sun, studied the movement of the satellites of Jupiter, and observed Saturn. In 1611, Galileo traveled to Rome, where he received an enthusiastic reception at the papal court and where he struck up a friendship with Prince Cesi, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei (“Lynx-Eyed Academy”), of which he became a member. At the insistence of the Duke, Galileo published his first anti-Aristotelian work, “Discourse on Bodies in Water and Those that Move in It” (1612), where he applied the principle of equal moments to the derivation of equilibrium conditions in liquid bodies.
However, in 1613, a letter from Galileo to Abbot Castelli became known, in which he defended the views of Copernicus. The letter served as a reason for direct denunciation of Galileo to the Inquisition. In 1616, the Jesuit congregation declared the teachings of Copernicus heretical, and Copernicus' book was included in the list of prohibited books. Galileo was not named in the decree, but he was privately ordered to renounce his defense of this doctrine. Galileo formally submitted to the decree. For several years he was forced to remain silent about the Copernican system or speak about it in hints. Galileo's only major work during this period was The Assayer (1623), a polemical treatise on the three comets that appeared in 1618. Regarding literary form, wit and sophistication of style, this is one of Galileo’s most remarkable works.
In 1623, Galileo's friend Cardinal Maffeo Barberini ascended the papal throne under the name of Urban VIII. For Galileo, this event seemed tantamount to liberation from the bonds of interdict (decree). In 1630, he arrived in Rome with the finished manuscript of the “Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Tides” (the first title of the “Dialogue on Two major systems world"), in which the systems of Copernicus and Ptolemy are presented in conversations between three interlocutors: Sagredo, Salviati and Simplicio.
Pope Urban VIII agreed to publish a book in which the teachings of Copernicus would be presented as one of the possible hypotheses. After lengthy censorship ordeals, Galileo received the long-awaited permission to publish the Dialogue with some changes; the book appeared in Florence in Italian in January 1632. A few months after the book's publication, Galileo received an order from Rome to stop further sales of the publication. At the request of the Inquisition, Galileo was forced to come to Rome in February 1633. A trial was initiated against him. During four interrogations - from April 12 to June 21, 1633 - Galileo renounced the teachings of Copernicus and on June 22 brought public repentance on his knees in the Church of Maria Sopra Minerva. “Dialogue” was banned, and Galileo was officially considered a “prisoner of the Inquisition” for 9 years. First he lived in Rome, in the ducal palace, then in his villa Arcetri, near Florence. He was forbidden to talk with anyone about the movement of the Earth and publish works. Despite the papal interdict, in Protestant countries there appeared Latin translation"Dialogue", Galileo's reasoning on the relationship between the Bible and natural science was published in Holland. Finally, in 1638, one of Galileo’s most important works was published in Holland, summing up his physical research and containing a rationale for dynamics - “Conversations and mathematical proofs concerning two new branches of science...”
In 1637 Galileo went blind; he died on January 8, 1642. In 1737, Galileo's last will was fulfilled - his ashes were transferred to Florence to the Church of Santa Croce, where he was buried next to Michelangelo.
Galileo's influence on the development of mechanics, optics and astronomy in the 17th century. invaluable. His scientific activity, the enormous importance of the discovery, scientific courage were decisive for the victory of the heliocentric system of the world. Galileo's work on the creation of the basic principles of mechanics was especially significant. If the basic laws of motion were not expressed by Galileo with the clarity with which Isaac Newton did, then in essence the law of inertia and the law of addition of motions were fully understood by him and applied to the solution of practical problems. The history of statics begins with Archimedes; Galileo discovers the history of dynamics. He was the first to put forward the idea of the relativity of motion and solved a number of basic mechanical problems. This includes, first of all, the study of the laws of free fall of bodies and their fall along an inclined plane; laws of motion of a body thrown at an angle to the horizon; establishing the conservation of mechanical energy when a pendulum oscillates. Galileo dealt a blow to Aristotelian dogmatic ideas about absolutely light bodies (fire, air); in a series of ingenious experiments he showed that air is a heavy body and even defined it specific gravity in relation to water.
The basis of Galileo’s worldview is the recognition of the objective existence of the world, i.e. its existence outside and independent of human consciousness. The world is infinite, he believed, matter is eternal. In all processes occurring in nature, nothing is destroyed or generated - only change occurs relative position bodies or their parts. Matter consists of absolutely indivisible atoms, its movement is the only universal mechanical movement. Heavenly bodies similar to the Earth and subject to the same laws of mechanics. Everything in nature is subject to strict mechanical causality. The real purpose Galileo saw science in finding the causes of phenomena. According to Galileo, knowledge of the inner necessity of phenomena is the highest level of knowledge. Galileo considered observation to be the starting point for knowledge of nature, and experience to be the basis of science. Rejecting the attempts of the scholastics to obtain the truth from a comparison of texts of recognized authorities and through abstract speculation, Galileo argued that the task of a scientist is “... to study great book nature, which is the real subject of philosophy." Those who blindly adhere to the opinions of authorities, not wanting to study natural phenomena on their own, Galileo called “slavish minds,” considered them unworthy of the title of philosopher and branded them “doctors of rote learning.” However, limited by the conditions of his time, Galileo was not consistent; he shared the theory of dual truth and assumed a divine first impulse.
Galileo's talent was not limited to the field of science: he was a musician, artist, lover of the arts and a brilliant writer. His scientific treatises most of which was written in the popular Italian language, although Galileo was fluent in Latin, can also be classified as works of art in terms of the simplicity and clarity of presentation and the brilliance of the literary style. Galileo translated from Greek language in Latin, studied ancient classics and Renaissance poets (the works “Notes on Ariosto”, “Criticism of Tasso”), spoke at the Florence Academy on the study of Dante, wrote a burlesque poem “Satire on Toga Wearers”. Galileo is a co-author of A. Salvadori’s canzone “On the Medici Stars” - the satellites of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610.
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Biography of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Education:University of Pisa
Place of Birth: Pisa, Duchy of Florence
A place of death: Arcetri, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
- Italian astronomer, physicist, philosopher: biography with photos, main discoveries and ideas that he invented, the first telescope, the moons of Jupiter, Copernicus.
Galileo Galilei has often been called the first modern physicist. Biography Galileo Galilei began on February 15, 1564 in the Italian city of Pisa. His father was an accomplished scientist, and he instilled in Galileo his love of science. His father motivated him to study medicine, and he eventually entered the University of Pisa. IN short time Galileo's interests soon turned to mathematics and natural philosophy. He left university without completing his degree. Later, in 1592, he was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Padua (university of the Venetian Republic), where he remained until 1610. His responsibilities primarily included teaching Euclidian geometry and standard (geocentric) astronomy to medical students who needed to know some astronomy in order to use astrology in their medical practice. During this time, Galileo Galilei's astronomical ideas became quite unconventional. No state would recognize this belief for many years.
In the summer of 1609, Galileo Galilei heard about a spyglass that the Dutchman was presenting in Venice. Using these reports and his technical knowledge, he created his own telescopes, which were far superior in performance to the Dutch instrument. Using these instruments, he viewed the Moon, and was the first person to observe mountain ranges, seas, and other features. He observed Saturn and its rings, which he described as “ears,” and the four largest moons of Jupiter, which are now called the Galilean moons in his honor. His observations were later published in a work entitled "Star Messenger" ("Messenger of the Stars"), written by him in 1610. It caused a sensation after its publication. While Galileo is remembered for his work on free fall, his use of the telescope, and his experiments, he is perhaps better known for his controversial views on natural law than for his actual contributions to science. He believed that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the universe. This belief is comparable to how Copernicus was at odds with Roman Catholic Church, which adhered to geocentric views. His works were later included in the "Vatican List" of rejected works. They have only recently been removed from the list.
Because of these beliefs, Galileo Galilei received an unspoken and official warning from the church in one thousand six hundred and sixteen. She stated that he should have abandoned the views of Copernicus. In one thousand six hundred and twenty-two, Galileo wrote “Laboratory Chemist” (“Assayer”), which was approved and published in one thousand six hundred and twenty-three. In one thousand six hundred and thirty-two he published in Florence his “Dialogue” on the two most important systems of the world. In October one thousand six hundred and thirty-two he was summoned to the Holy Office (Inquisition) in Rome. The court issued a verdict convicting him. He was also obliged to take an oath before the Holy Roman Church, in which he was forced to renounce his beliefs that the Sun was the center of the solar system. He was sent into exile in Siena and finally, in December one thousand six hundred and thirty-three, he was allowed to retire to his villa in Arcetri, Gioiello. His health steadily deteriorated, and in one thousand six hundred and thirty-eight he became completely blind. Galileo Galilei died in Arcetri on the eighth of January one thousand six hundred and forty-two. For many years after his death, his discoveries and work were not recognized as the pioneering achievements that they were.
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3 oldest observatories in the world: mysterious research... Astronomy began long before the appearance of the first telescope and even lenses. Now on Earth you can find many amazing structures that...
An Italian scientist who became the greatest of his time, Galileo was the first to use a telescope to study celestial bodies and was an ardent supporter of the heliocentric system, the existence of which he worked for decades to prove. And he renounced his convictions only under threat of death.
Families and childhood
Galileo was born into a poor noble family. Biographers know little about the childhood of the future genius; the only thing known for certain is that the family did not have many dishes on the table, but there was always time and desire to study music, since Galileo’s father was a lutenist and music theorist. In addition to Galileo himself, his parents had five more children, but two died in infancy.
When Galileo was eight, his father gathered the whole family and moved to Florence. The Medici dynasty, which ruled there, helped people of art. This is exactly what Galileo’s family hoped for.
As a child, Galileo was fond of art, he also knew how to speak very eloquently and write no less beautifully.
Galileo received his first basics of science at the Vallombrosa monastery. He was a very diligent student who eventually became the top of his class. Having finished elementary education, Galileo decided to choose the path of a priest, but his father opposed and told his son that medicine also helps people.
Therefore, at the age of 17, Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. But in parallel with the main course, he also began listening to lectures on geometry. No one spoke about mathematics either at home or in the monastery, and for Galileo it was completely new item. The young man became so immersed in theory that his father began to fear that he might give up medicine.
During his three years at the university, Galileo made both friends and enemies among the teachers. The young man, who read a lot and studied a lot, always had his own opinion and did not consider it necessary to hide it. The question arose especially acutely when he became interested in astronomy, especially since Copernicus’s heliocentric theory was very popular at that time, and the situation was aggravated by the calendar reform with the transition to the Gregorian calendar.
Due to financial difficulties, the father could no longer pay for Galileo’s studies, and the teachers refused to make an exception so that the gifted student could continue to study for free - the guy’s tough temper and his previously unrestrained character played a cruel joke. Therefore, Galileo came home to Florence in 1585 without any degrees. But, to his happiness, his experiments within the university walls did not pass the attention of wealthy nobles. Thus, a certain Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte remembered the guy who invented hydraulic scales. The nobleman appreciated the young scientist and made every effort to ensure that the Medici court awarded him a scientific scholarship for further experiments.
Four years later, Galileo returned to the University of Pisa as a professor of mathematics and began conducting his first experiments in mechanics. He lived poorly because he received 30 times less salary than his colleagues from the medical faculty. But a year later his first treatise, “On Movement,” was ready.
The telescope and the astronomical revolution
In 1892, Galileo moved to the Venetian Republic - he was offered a position as a professor of mathematics at the University of Padua. There he also taught astronomy and mechanics. The Venetian Doge himself wrote a recommendation for this position.
It was in Padua that Galileo began the most fruitful period of his life. Students love him as a teacher. The government places orders for new mechanisms all the time. He writes a treatise “Mechanics”, which is immediately translated into French. In this work, the scientist first studied the movement of a pendulum and took the first steps in the theory of falling bodies.
In the fall of 1604, Galileo received a new impetus for the study of astronomy - a phenomenon that is now called Kepler's Supernova becomes visible in the sky. And five years later Galileo made his first telescope, using as a basis the telescope previously developed in Holland.
The telescope made it possible to see something that no one had even suspected before: the Milky Way turned out to be thousands of individual stars, Galileo saw craters on the Moon, and satellite planets near Jupiter. All these discoveries were described by him in the Starry Messenger - Europe simply shook with delight, all the rich people of the world immediately wanted the telescope for themselves. Galileo himself presented several mechanisms to the Senate of Venice, for which he was given the title of professor for life and was given a huge salary.
Despite stunning success and popularity, Galileo was mired in debt. After his father's death he had to support younger brother and sisters, and also got married. Therefore, Galileo agreed to move to Florence. There he was offered a position as an adviser with a high salary at the duke's court. But Florence is not Venice, where the hands of the Inquisition did not reach...
Florence and the charge of heresy
Since Galileo had little business at court, free time he used for research. He discovered the phases of Venus, spots on the Sun, after which he proved that the star rotates around its axis.
Galileo writes down all his discoveries in his characteristic, slightly incisive form, for which he was disliked as a student. Now his frivolity has more serious consequences: the fact that he defends the “free-thinking Copernicus”, which contradicts the scriptures, and criticizes the works of Ptolemy and Aristotle, did him no honor in the eyes of the Jesuits.
In 1611, Galileo was received by Pope Paul V, to whom he tried to prove that the church should keep pace with scientific discoveries, for which he even brought his own telescope. At first everything seemed to go well, but then Galileo in a letter expressed himself about the Holy Scriptures, which, as he believed, were not authoritative for science, but only good for the salvation of the soul. He himself published the same letter. Two years later, his work “On Sunspots” was published, where he openly admitted that Copernicus was right.
At the beginning of 1615, the Inquisition opened a case against him, accusing him of heresy. A year later, the Vatican declared heliocentrism a dangerous heresy. Officially, Galileo was promised that nothing would threaten him if he stopped his absurd works and publicly extolled Copernicanism. Therefore, he returned to Florence and began to think about how to continue working so as to be safe. In the end, he decided to take a risk and publish the book he had been working on for 16 years.
But only in 1631, more than 30 years later, Galileo cunningly managed to bypass papal censorship and publish “Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World.” So that the book can be understood more people, it was published not in Latin, but in Italian.
Within a few months, the book was confiscated, and Galileo was summoned to Rome for a meeting of the Inquisition court. After three months of investigation, Galileo was faced with a choice: either abandon his thoughts or share the fate of Giordano Bruno. And Galileo refused.
He spent the rest of his life in the villa under constant supervision. Died at 78 years old. The Pope himself forbade him to be buried in the family crypt. Only in 1737 were his remains reburied in the Basilica of Santa Croce, next to Michelangelo.
- In 1758, Pope Benedict XIV ordered that works advocating heliocentrism be removed from the Index of Prohibited Books; however, this work was carried out slowly and was completed only in 1835.
- From 1979 to 1981, on the initiative of Pope John Paul II, a commission worked to rehabilitate Galileo, and on October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II officially admitted that the Inquisition in 1633 made a mistake by forcefully forcing the scientist to renounce the Copernican theory.
- Galileo is rightfully considered the founder of not only experimental, but, to a large extent, theoretical physics.
- Regarding the philosophy of nature, Galileo was a convinced rationalist. He believed that the laws of nature are comprehensible to the human mind.
One of the most famous astronomers, physicists and philosophers in human history is Galileo Galilei. A short biography and his discoveries, which you will now learn about, will allow you to get a general idea of this outstanding person.
First steps in the world of science
Galileo was born in Pisa (Italy), February 15, 1564. At the age of eighteen, the young man entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. His father pushed him to take this step, but due to lack of money, Galileo was soon forced to leave his studies. However, the time that the future scientist spent at the university was not in vain, because it was here that he began to take a keen interest in mathematics and physics. No longer a student, the gifted Galileo Galilei did not abandon his hobbies. A short biography and his discoveries made during this period played important role V future fate scientist. He devotes some time to independent research into mechanics, and then returns to the University of Pisa, this time as a mathematics teacher. After some time, he was invited to continue teaching at the University of Padua, where he explained to students the basics of mechanics, geometry and astronomy. It was at this time that Galileo began to make discoveries significant for science.
In 1593, the first scientist was published - a book with the laconic title “Mechanics”, in which Galileo described his observations.
Astronomical research
After the book was published, a new Galileo Galilei was “born”. A short biography and his discoveries is a topic that cannot be discussed without mentioning the events of 1609. After all, it was then that Galileo independently built his first telescope with a concave eyepiece and a convex lens. The device gave an increase of approximately three times. However, Galileo did not stop there. Continuing to improve his telescope, he increased the magnification to 32 times. While using it to observe the Earth's satellite, the Moon, Galileo discovered that its surface, like the Earth's, was not flat, but covered with various mountains and numerous craters. Four stars were also discovered through the glass and changed their usual sizes, and for the first time the idea of their global remoteness arose. turned out to be a huge accumulation of millions of new celestial bodies. In addition, the scientist began to observe, study the movement of the Sun and make notes about sunspots.
Conflict with the Church
The biography of Galileo Galilei is another round in the confrontation between the science of that time and church teaching. The scientist, based on his observations, soon comes to the conclusion that the heliocentric one, first proposed and substantiated by Copernicus, is the only correct one. This was contrary to the literal understanding of Psalms 93 and 104, as well as Ecclesiastes 1:5, which refers to the immobility of the Earth. Galileo was summoned to Rome, where they demanded that he stop promoting “heretical” views, and the scientist was forced to comply.
However, Galileo Galilei, whose discoveries at that time were already appreciated by some representatives of the scientific community, did not stop there. In 1632, he made a cunning move - he published a book entitled “Dialogue on the two most important systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernican.” This work was written in an unusual form of dialogue at that time, the participants of which were two supporters of the Copernican theory, as well as one follower of the teachings of Ptolemy and Aristotle. Pope Urban VIII, good friend Galileo, even gave permission to publish the book. But this did not last long - after just a couple of months, the work was recognized as contrary to the tenets of the church and banned. The author was summoned to Rome for trial.
The investigation lasted quite a long time: from April 21 to June 21, 1633. On June 22, Galileo was forced to pronounce the text proposed to him, according to which he renounced his “false” beliefs.
The last years in the life of a scientist
I had to work in the most difficult conditions. Galileo was sent to his Villa Archertri in Florence. Here he was under constant supervision of the Inquisition and had no right to go to the city (Rome). In 1634, the scientist’s beloved daughter, who took care of him for a long time, died.
Death came to Galileo on January 8, 1642. He was buried on the territory of his villa, without any honors and even without a tombstone. However, in 1737, almost a hundred years later, the scientist’s last will was fulfilled - his ashes were transferred to the monastic chapel of the Florence Cathedral of Santa Croce. On the seventeenth of March he was finally buried there, not far from Michelangelo’s tomb.
Posthumous rehabilitation
Was Galileo Galilei right in his beliefs? A short biography and his discoveries have long been a topic of debate between clergy and luminaries of the scientific world; many conflicts and disputes have developed on this basis. However, only on December 31, 1992 (!) John Paul II officially admitted that the Inquisition in the 33rd year of the 17th century made a mistake, forcing the scientist to renounce heliocentric theory of the universe, formulated by Nicolaus Copernicus.
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