Galileo Galilei was a brilliant Math and Physics professor of the time. He had already discovered many important physics principles when he became interested in astronomy.
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564. He and his family lived in Italy.
He was curious about science. He liked to learn how things worked. Galileo joined his family at Florence in 1574 and was tutored at first by Jacopo Borghini after which he was sent to the Camaldolese monastery at Vallombroso to study grammar, logic and rhetoric.
At the age of just 17 while still a student and using just his pulse as a timer, he observed that a pendulum takes the same amount of time to swing through its arc, no matter what its length. This was the first of many hugely important breakthroughs in physics.
In 1592, he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Padua, where he was to remain after 18 years and where most of his important work was carried out.
Galileo transformed Aristotle’s logic of nature into mathematical, experimental physics. Although Galileo was not called a physicist in his own time, his worked provided procedures and results that lie at the heart of what people know today as physics.
In 1634 Galileo became seriously ill with a hernia. Galileo died at Arcetri, near Florence, on January 8, 1642, He was 77 years old.
His last book was Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences, finished in 1638. The book contains Galileo’s contributions to the science of physics. In it, he referred his theories of motion and the principles of mechanics.
Because of his pioneer work in gravitation and motion and is combining mathematical analysis with experimentation, Galileo is often referred to as the founder of modern mechanics and experimental physics.
Galileo Galilei
