Galileo Galilei: The Mathematician
10/29/14
Math 103
Professor Kessler
Joe Hamilton
10/29/14
Math 103
Professor Kessler
Galileo Galilei: The Mathematician
Galileo Galilei was born on the 15th of February in 1564 in Pisa, Italy. He would become a household name in modern history due to his many achievements to science and mathematics. Galileo studied under Jacopo Borghini for two years. Galileo was then educated at the Camaldolese Monastery at Vallombrosa for most of his younger years. He would eventually enroll in the University of Pisa for a degree in medicine. Then, after accidently attending a geometry lecture, Galileo switched to the study of mathematics.
Galileo would come to invent a thermoscope, which was the predecessor to the thermometer. He also published The Little Balance, which is what brought him to the attention of the scholarly world. Galileo furthered mankind's understanding of astronomy, applied science, as well as making significant improvements to the telescope. He pointed his telescope toward the night sky and discovered 4 moons around Jupiter that are now called the Galilean Moons. He would also use his understanding of ocean tides to make an argument for the fact that the earth moves around the sun, not the opposite, which was what was commonly accepted. The Catholic Church ordered that publishing's of Galileo could not contain references to ocean tides. Galileo was a large supporter of heliocentrism, which caused large amounts of controversy in the Catholic Church because the belief at the time was that the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo went to Rome to defend the scientific position on the issue, but "In 1616, an Inquisitional commission unanimously declared heliocentrism to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture."(Wiki). As a result of Galileo's trial in 1633, he was ordered to spend