Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa in 1564. In 1581 he went to the University of Pisa to study medicine, but he soon got distracted by mathematics. In 1583 he made his first important discovery, describing the rules that rule the motion of pendulums. From 1589 to 1610, Galileo was the leading person of mathematics at the universities of Pisa and Padua. It was during these years he performed experiments with bodies falling that made his most important contribution to physics. …show more content…
In January he discovered four new “stars” orbiting Jupiter, the planet’s four largest moons. He quickly published a short paper outlining his discoveries, “Siderius Nuncius”, or “The Starry Messenger”, which also had observations of the moon’s surface and descriptions and of a lot of new stars in the Milky Way. In an attempt to gain favor with the powerful grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de Medici, he suggested Jupiter’s moons be called the “Medician Stars”. “The Starry Messenger” made Galileo a celebrity in Italy. Cosimo II appointed him mathematician and philosopher to the Medicis, offering him a platform for proclaiming for proclaiming his theories and ridiculing his