26

Galileo Galilei - His Life, Work and Times

Last of the Renaissance, first of the New Age

Galileo can be seen as the culmination of the Italian Renaissance. He
was born in Pisa on 15 February 1564 (just two months before Shakespeare). Both his parents came from long-established Tuscan families; his father, Vincenzio, was a native of Florence who eventually
returned there, so it was at Florence that young Galileo was brought
up from the age of ten. Vincenzio was a professional musician, interested in current debates on musical theory. Presumably Galileo did
not have so much musical talent, although like his father, he enjoyed
playing the lute, and always took an interest in acoustic questions.
Vincenzio apparently intended Galileo, his eldest son, to be a doctor,
and so Galileo went to medical school at the University of Pisa, in
1581. But he left after four years without taking his degree. On his
return to Florence, he began to take a serious interest in mathematics,
which he studied with Ostilio Ricci, who taught at the court of the
Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Vincenzio seems to have been unhappy at the direction his son's interests were taking, but Galileo persisted and, indeed, was appointed
to a junior post at his old university in 1589. There he took up the
ideas of geometer Archimedes (. page 13), who had applied the methods of geometry to physical problems. Archimedes' principle states
that bodies float or sink, according to the ratio of their density to that
of the medium in which they are immersed. Galileo extended this, to
consider the ratio of the speeds of falling bodies to the density of the
media through which they fall. None of this was in itself so revolutionary, but it led him to contradict Aristotle's view that bodies "naturally" returned to their proper place. Galileo pointed out that the
weight of the bodies was irrelevant to their speed of falling; only the
density of the medium counted. If there were space without any
medium - that is, completely empty space, a vacuum - all bodies
would fall at the same speed. It is possible that he demonstrated his
point by throwing different weights off the Leaning Tower of Pi sa .
~ The Mgeometric
and military compass"
made by Galileo in 1597 and
the manuscript title page of
his handbook on its use.
Galileo set up a workshop
for its manufacture in his
house at Padua, to
supplement his salary as
professor of mathematics.

Historical Background

.1559 Italian wars ended with

Spain supreme in Italy
1545Counter-Reformation
II

initiated at Council of Trent

.15691n Florence, the Medici

became dukes of Tuscany

1585 SI died math matics in

Flor nee with C tilio Ricci
c.1340Jean Buridan (c. 1300c. 1385), French scholar,
developed theory of "impetus":
motion of a body is conserved
insofar as it is not diminished by

friction or other resistance

KEYi
Olf'tronom

IfechaniCS
Scientific n

elescope
thod
c. 1340 Richard Swineshead,
scholar of Oxford, devised
geometrical method for
translating change intime or

intensity of quality into

quantitative terms

1442 Platonic Academy set up by

Cosimo de' Medici in Florence

Ue, u Ii a ~d Prhl ~te

~ 5Februar

Q; q; ~

ornatPis

ndgeom try
~585-1587 ~rotehisf sttracts 0
(on cent of gravity ~nd on a
beam balance)
158 Began lect ring in Siema .6
and Flore e
1564Galil oGalilei
Italy

qH"6-5 --1-j,P':hL..5--1-i81-0--1-4~r;=

1581 Er ered Pisa

iversity to .6
stu y medicine

Scientific Background
1577 Brahe showed that comets '0
are interplanetary, not within
Earth's atmosphere as

previously supposed
1572Tycho Brah~ (1546-16011.

Danish astronomer, showed that

the newstar in Cassiopeia was

truly a star, and that the heavens

were not immutable

01543 Nicolaus Copernicus (147315431. Polish astronomer,

proposed heliocentric theory:
that Sun is center of cosmos and
Earth one of its planets

01536 Niccol6 Tartaglia (15001557), Italian mathematician,

launched "new science" of
ballistics

1584Giordano Bruno (1548- 0

16001. Italian reformer, claimed
that Universe is infinite; burned
at stake by Inquisition

01552 Giovanni Battista Benedetti

(1530-1590), Italian
mathematician, showed that
velocity offalling bodies is not

related to their weights

1575 Academy of Mathematical 0
Sciences set up in Madrid

1585 Simon Stevinus (c. 1548- 0

1620), Dutch mathematician,

3.
1535 1545
1565
1575
1580
1570
1585

1555

introduced decimal fractions

into common usage