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Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei (/ ˌ ɡ æ l ɪ ˈ l eɪ oʊ ˌ ɡ æ l ɪ ˈ l eɪ /, US also / ˌ ɡ æ l ɪ ˈ l iː oʊ-/; Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛːi]) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian [a] astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath.
Galileo began his telescopic observations in the later part of 1609, and by March 1610 was able to publish a small book, The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius), describing some of his discoveries: mountains on the Moon, lesser moons in orbit around Jupiter, and the resolution of what had been thought to be very cloudy masses in the sky (nebulae) into collections of stars too faint to see ...
At the time of Sidereus Nuncius ' publication, Galileo was a mathematician at the University of Padua and had recently received a lifetime contract for his work in building more powerful telescopes. He desired to return to Florence, and in hopes of gaining patronage there, he dedicated Sidereus Nuncius to his former pupil, now the Grand Duke of ...
The play stays generally faithful to Galileo's science and timeline thereof, but takes significant liberties with his personal life. Galileo did in fact use a telescope, observe the moons of Jupiter, advocate for the heliocentric model, observe sunspots, investigate buoyancy, and write on physics, and did visit the Vatican twice to defend his ...
His improvements to the telescope, astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism were all integral to the Copernican Revolution. Based on the designs of Hans Lippershey, Galileo designed his own telescope which, in the following year, he had improved to 30x magnification. [17]
In 1605, Galileo had been employed as a mathematics tutor for Cosimo de' Medici. In 1609, Cosimo became Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany. Galileo, seeking patronage from his now-wealthy former student and his powerful family, used the discovery of Jupiter's moons to gain it. [6] On 13 February 1610, Galileo wrote to the Grand Duke's secretary:
In his work Phaenomenon singulare (1609) Kepler had described what he took to be the transit of Mercury, observed on 29 May 1607. However, after Michael Maestlin pointed out Galileo's work to him, he corrected himself in 1617 in his Ephemerides, recognising long after the event that what he had seen was sunspots. [74]
Galileo was one of the leading minds of the Scientific Revolution. [1] He was dubbed the founder of theoretical physics. [2] He is also credited with the invention of the celatone (a type of telescope) and the geometric and military compass. [3] Galileo's escapement was the earliest design of a pendulum clock.