Galileo Galilei Research Paper

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Pages: 2

Considered the father of modern science, Galileo Galilei, born in 1564 and died in 1642, made major contributions to the fields of physics, astronomy, cosmology, mathematics and philosophy. He invented an improved telescope that let him observe and describe the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus, sunspots and the rugged lunar surface. His talent for self-promotion earned him important friends among Italy’s ruling elite and enemies among the Catholic Church’s leaders. His support of a heliocentric universe brought him before religious authorities in 1616 and again in 1633, when he was forced to withdraw his idea/theory and was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
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.
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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