Galileo Galilei's Contributions to Science

Galileo Galilei was a noteworthy Italian astronomer, physicist, philosopher, and mathemation. Along with Archimedes, Einstein, and Newton he represents one of the greatest scientists in the world. Galileo was not the first to invent the telescope, but the first to improve it and expand the ideas of the world in that time period.

Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy, and was the first of seven children of Vincenzio Galilei, a trader and Giula Ammannati, an upper-class woman who married below her class. When Galileo was a young boy his family moved to Florence, Italy. In November of 1581, Vincenzio Galilei had Galileo enrolled in the University of Pisa, School of Medicine, because he wanted Galileo to become a doctor. Galileo had other plans, and in early 1583 he began spending his time with the mathematics professors instead of the medical ones. When his father learned of this, he was furious and traveled 60 miles from Florence to Pisa just to confront his son with the knowledge that he had neglected in his studies.The mathematician professor intervened and persuaded Vincenzio to allow Galileo to study mathematics on the condition that after one year, all of Galileo’s support would be cut off and he was on his own. In the spring of 1585, Galileo skipped his final exams and left the university without a degree. He began finding work as a math tutor. In November of 1589, Galileo found a position as a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa, the same school he had left without a degree four years before. Galileo was a brilliant teacher, but his amazing ways of thinking and open criticism of Aristotle’s teachings were not acceptable to the other professors at the university. They felt that his t...

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...nd executed by burning at the stake for the crime of heresy. On May 10 he admitted in heresy in writing and on June 22 he publicly confessed. He was sentenced to house arrest in his home near Florence for an indefinite length of time.

By 1638, Galileo was blind and crippled with arthritis. He continued to work on books through the help of his devoted students and friends. Later, the Vatican pardoned Galileo and officially admitted that he had been right all along. But it was not until three hundred and fifty years later, in 1992 that this theory was proved.

Works Cited

Bendick, Jeanne. Along came Galileo. Sandwich, Mass.: Beautiful Feet Books, 1999. Print.

Bendick, Jeanne. Galen and the gateway to medicine. Bathgate, N.D.: Bethlehem Books ;, 2002. Print.

Nardo, Don. The trial of Galileo: science versus the Inquisition. San Diego, Calif.: Lucent Books, 2004. Print.