Personality - Galileo

THE EARLY YEARS

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564, 21 years after the death of Copernicus and three days before the death of Michelangelo.

Galileo was the first of seven children. Even over 400 years before, his parents, specially his father, believed that there was more money in medicine.

Therefore, Inspite of his father being musician and wool trader, wanted his talented son to go for medicine.

EDUCATION

At the age of 11, he was sent to study in a Jesuit monastery. Galileo, after four years decided on his life’s mission. He announced to his father that he wanted to be…….. a monk !

His father had something different in his mind for his gifted son. As a result he was immediately withdrawn from the monastery. At the age of seventeen, Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine as per his father’s wish.

Except for mathematics, he was bored by majority of his courses. He was vocal to his profession. He used to remain absent quite frequently.

As a result, the university informed his family about the probability of Galileo’s flunking. A compromise was worked out. Galileo was tutored full-time in mathematics by the mathematician of the Tusan court.

His father was quite happy with it, as he thought this might allow Galileo to successfully complete his college education. But finally Galileo left the university without degree.

NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

Galileo entered the University of Padua. He found company of good friends and liked the city itself. But by 1593 he was in desperate need of additional cash. Death of his father made him head of the family and was personally responsible for his family. Debts were pressing down on him, specially the dowry for one of his sisters, which was paid in installments over decades. Galileo returned to Florence as he was threatened for imprisonment by his Debtors.

Galileo’s need was to come up with some kind of device, which could earn him a tidy profit from his discovery of `Rudimentary thermometer’, which for the first time allowed temperature variations to be measured and an ingenious device to raise water from aquifers found no market. But he got greater success in 1596 with a military compass, which could be used to accurately aim cannonballs.

Galileo could earn fair amount of money from a modified civilian version, which could be used for land surveying that came out in 1597. He was able to make profit due to the instruments, which were sold for three times the cost of manufacture, he also conducted the classes on how to use the instruments and the actual toolmaker was paid little wages. He also needed money to support his siblings, his mistress, who was reputed as a woman of easy habits and his three children.

THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA

When Galileo arrived at the University, some debate had started on one of the Aristotle’s `laws’ of nature. The discussion was such that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects. These words of Aristotle had been accepted as gospel truth and few efforts were made to test Aristotle’s conclusions by actually conducting an experiment.

As per the legend, Galileo had decided to give a try. He required to drop the objects from a great height. The perfect building was before him, the Tower of Pisa which is 54 meters tall. He climbed up to the top of the building carrying a variety of balls of different sizes and weights. He threw them down from the top. They landed at the bottom of the building at the same time.

It is said that the demonstration was witnessed by a huge crowd of students and professors. Aristotle was proved wrong.

A modern day professor published the results showing a theory to explain why Newton was wrong. Galileo had no such theory. He did not even publish his results. He continued to behave rudely to his colleagues. This was not a good move for a junior member of the faculty.

As he said, "Men are like wine flask."…. look at….. bottles with the handsome labels. When you taste them, they are full of air or perfume or rouge. These are bottles fit only to pee into !" No wonder that University of Pisa did not choose to renew Galileo’s contract.

IRONY OF FATE

He started tutoring students in mathematics when he was required to earn for his living. He experimented with floating objects, which could tell him that for example a piece of gold was 19.3 times heavier than the same volume of water. He started to prepare for his life’s ambition – a position on the mathematics faculty at a major university.

Although he was a brilliant personality, he was not chosen as a candidate, because he had offended many people in the field. Ironically a lecture on literature, turned his fortunes. Over a 100-year-old controversy. `What was the location, shape and dimensions of Dante’s Inferno ? was argued out by the academy of Florence. For modern generation this type of question would sound like asking the location of Sherlock Holmes. But the question was absolutely serious. Galileo asked to answer the question from the point of view of a man of science.

According to Dante’s line "[the giant Nimrod’s] face was about as long, and just as wide as St. Peter’s cone in Rome". Galileo informed that Lucifer himself was 2,000 arm-lengths long. The audience was impressed by this and he was remembered with favor.

Within a year Galileo got a three-year appointment from the university of Pisa, the same University which never granted him a degree.

FOR GALILEO – MISUNDERSTOOD

It is so bad then to be misunderstood ?

Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Pythagoras and Galileo and Newton and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh was misunderstood. To be great is to be misunderstood.

GALILEO – DEFENDED

Gassendi, Pierre, a well-known Catholic priest, and also known by his writings on astronomy, physics and mathematics, wrote a letter to Galileo that he had to pass the censorship of the Inquisition in 1633.

Galileo was watched narrowly by the Inquisition, many scholars were terrified, and a few denied any connection with him.

At that time Gassendi Pierre comforted Galileo by protesting that the ecclesiastical sentence had nothing to do with the conscience of a scientist, and Galileo had no reason to accuse himself of any moral failure.


Gassendi was wise, and he avoided persecution on the part of the church, although he professed materialism and criticized Descartes’s idealistic views.


THE LATTER YEARS

Galileo found himself old and sick at the age of 68. He was tortured and threatened. Ultimately he publicly confessed that he had been wrong to have said that the Earth moves around the Sun.

It has been said that after his confession, Galileo whispered "And yet, it moves’, He was 70 years, but he continued working.

He became blind by then. He spent his time working with a young student, Vincenzo Viviani, who was with him when he breathed his last on January 8, 1642.

THE TELESCOPE

There was a dramatic turn in Galileo’s career. In the year 1609, When he was on a holiday in Venice, he heard the rumor that a Dutch spectacle maker had invented a device through which one can see distant objects near at hand. Since it was obviously of tremendous military value for Holland, the methods were kept secret. A patent had been requested but was not granted.

It would also be a valuable instrument to Venice. Galileo decided to attempt the construction of his own spyglass. After toiling for 24 hours, he experimented and worked on the basis of instinct and bits of rumors, he was able to make a 3-power telescope.

If at all Galileo had stopped there, he would have become man of wealth and leisure. In history a footnote would have been written about him. He continued with the telescope, which resulted in people looking at the moon. People and even Galileo had expected moon to be smooth and even. But to their astonishment, the moon was rough and uneven and full of cavities and prominence. The features of the surface was much like those, which could be found on the earth. This was very exciting news for everyone. Many people thought that Galileo was wrong. Some of the mathematicians argued that even if the surface is rough, it had to be covered with invisible transparent, smooth crystal.

After few months Galileo improved upon his telescope. It was his 30 power telescope. He turned this telescope towards Jupiter, and found three small, bright stars near the planet. One of them was to the west, the other two were to the east. All the three were in straight line. The next evening, when Galileo again looked at the Jupiter, he found that all these three stars were still in the straight line but in the west of the planet.

For other following weeks he kept observing and came to the conclusion that the stars were actually small satellites, which were rotating around Jupiter. "These Satellites did not move around the Earth." The question which arose in his mind was, "if there were satellites that didn’t move around the Earth, wasn't it possible that the Earth was not the center of the universe ? Couldn’t the Copernican idea of the Sun at the centre of the solar system be correct ?

Like a modern scientist, Galileo also published his findings. It was a small book titled "The Starry Messenger." In March 1610 about 550 copies were published. The book gave tremendous excitement and was appreciated by public at large. One can imagine what people would have felt when they learnt that the Earth was round.

And there were more discoveries: the appearance of bumps next to the planet Saturn, spotted on the Sun’s surface and seeing Venus change from a full disk to a silver of light.



TIDES

An another amusement was, Galileo’s writings about ocean tides.

He found that it was more interesting to have an imaginary conversation, or dialogue, between three fractional characters, than to write his arguments as a scientific paper.

PENDULUM

At the age of 20, Galileo noticed a swinging overhead while he was in cathedral. He was curious to find out how long it took the lamp to swing back and forth.

He used his pulse to time large and small swings.

Galileo discovered something that no one else would have ever realized, that the period of each swing was exactly the same.

It was his `Law of Pendulum,’ which would eventually be used to regulate clocks, made Galileo instantly famous.

COPERNICAN THEORY

Copernican system is, in which everything goes around the Sun, and the Moon, therefore must orbit the Sun and the Tychonic. One in which everything, but the Earth and Moon go around the Sun, which in turn goes around the Earth. The contemporary astronomers favored the Tychonic system. Galileo authoritatively stated to use all his discoveries as evidence for Copernicanism and to do so with verbal as well as mathematical skill.

Galileo’s increasingly open Copernicanism began to cause trouble for him. In 1613, he wrote a letter to his student Benedetto Castelli in Pisa about the problem of squaring the Copernican theory with certain biblical passages. Some of the Galileo’s enemies sent the copies of this letter to the Inquisition in Rome. In Rome, many Dominican fathers lodged complaints against Galileo. Galileo went to Rome for defending the Copernican cause and his name. In his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, he discussed the problem of interpreting Biblical passages with regard to scientific discoveries. He actually did not interpret the Bible except for one example.

Improperly prepared documents, which were placed in Inquisition files stated that Galileo was warned "not to hold, teach, or defend" the Copernican theory "in any way whatever, either orally or in writing." Galileo was restricted to express anything on the Copernican issue. He slowly recovered from this setback.

INTERPRETER OF BIBLE

Galileo was a religious man. He also agreed that the Bible could never be wrong. But he said and believed that the interpreters of the Bible could make mistakes. He also thought it was a mistake to assume that the Bible had to be taken literally.

"The true meaning of a Biblical verse might not be obvious at all, and wise scholars would have to work hard to find the true meanings.

After all, a cardinal in the Church itself had once said that the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes!" Finally he ended with an explanation of how the miracle could not possibly have taken place if the Sun went around the Earth.

This might have been one of Galileo’s mistakes. In those days, only Churchman were allowed to interpret the Bible, or to define God’s intentions." It was absolutely unthinkable for a mere member of the public to do so."

QUOTATIONS

Doubt is the father of invention.


I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.


Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes. I mean the universe, but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word of it.


And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will ? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others ? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please ? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.

FEBRUARY 15, 1564
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy.

1574
His father Vincenzo Galilei, with his family, moved to Florence.


1579
Galileo was at the monastery of Santa Maria di Vallombrosa, where he considered joining the order.Galileo returned to his family in Florence in July.


SEPTEMBER 5, 1581
Galileo matriculated as a student of the ‘Arts’ at the University of Pisa. Then after in the same year he entered the University of Pisa to study medicine.


1583
During his student days at Pisa, Galileo formulated the isochronism of the ‘Pendulum’ while watching the oscillations of a lamp in the cathedral of Pisa. Galileo did not study Euclid’s Elements at the University but in Florence under the court mathematician Ostilio Ricci.


1585
He completed the fourth year of his studies and returned to Florence without a degree. He gave private lessons in mathematics in Florence and Sienna.


1586
It was his first voyage to Rome and he met Christopher Clavius. He applied for a lectureship of mathematics at the University of Sienna. He found certain propositions about centers of gravity, which go beyond the work of Archimedes.
1587
Vincenzo Galilei performed experiments on the relationship between the tension and pitch of stings. Galileo, his son, must have helped him with these and surely was aware of them. Galileo gave two public lectures at the Academia Florentina (Florentine Academy) about the shape, location, and dimensions of hell as described in Dante’s Inferno. He tried to get teaching positions at the University of Sienna, Padua, Pisa and Bologna. He also tried for the lectureship at Florence. Finally he got lectureship of mathematics at the university of Pisa.

1589-1592
In ‘On Motion’ Galileo used the Archimedian approach to motion : As Aristotle maintained, the speed of falling bodies is propositional to their density


1592
Galileo obtained the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua in the Venetian Republic where he remained until the year 1610. His initial contract is for four years, renewable for two further years. His duties were to lecture on geometry and astronomy.


1593
Galileo put together treaties on fortifications and mechanics for his private students.


1595
He developed his explanation of the tides, which invokes the annual and diurnal motion of the Earth. It seemed that his preference for Copernican theory dated from this year.


1597
He invented ‘Geometric and Military Compass’, and a ‘Sector’ (a mathematical instrument consisting of two rulers connected at one end by a joint and marked with several scales"). It was used to solve practical mathematical problems. He taught its use to his private students and wrote an instruction manual, which was later published.


1599
His relations with Marina Gamba began. To make scientific instruments and produce the sector, he employed a craftsman, Marc’ Antonio Mazzoleni. These products were sold to wealthy students along with his treatise explaining its use.


AUGUST 13, 1600
Marina Gamba gave birth to a daughter, who was baptized Virgina. Later she took the name ‘Maria Celeste’.


JANUARY 1601
Galileo’s sister, Livia married Taddeo Galetti.Marina Gamba gave birth to second daughter who was baptized Livia. Later she took the name Arcangela in August.


1602
Galileo experimented with pendulum in connection with natural accelerated motion.