Date of birth: February 15, 1564
Died: January 8, 1642
Place of birth: Pisa, Tuscany region, Duchy of Florence, Italy (Italy)

Galileo Galilei- scientist, physicist and astronomer. Galileo Galilei, to which perhaps some of the most important discoveries in the field of astronomy belongs, is less known for his achievements in the fields of mathematics, mechanics and philosophy.

Born on February 15, 1564 in the city of Pisa (Italian Duchy of Florence) into a poor noble family. His father, Vincenzo, was a music theorist and lute player. Mother's name was Julia. The family was large: six children, and Galileo was the oldest of them.

Galileo studied at the Vallombrosa monastery. He grew up exemplary, was the best academic in his class. As soon as he finished his studies, he seriously thought about the future of the priest, but his father was categorically against it.

At the age of 17 he entered the University of Pisa. He is fond of mathematics. Studies medicine. However, after 3 years of study, his father finds himself in a very poor financial condition, and the family can no longer pay for Galileo's tuition. For especially talented students, there was an incentive not to pay for tuition. They filed a petition for her, but received a categorical refusal. Galileo never received his degree. He returned to Florence.

Galileo was very lucky, and he met a true connoisseur of research and scientific discovery. It was the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte. They were friends, and the Marquis sponsored many of Galileo's discoveries. It was thanks to the marquis in 1589 that Galileo returned to the University of Pisa, but now as a professor of mathematical sciences. In 1590 he wrote a scientific work that turned the world of physics. It was a treatise On Movement.

In 1591, his father dies, and the young scientist takes full responsibility for the family on his own shoulders. A year later, he quits his first job and goes to the University of Padua in Venice, where Galileo was offered a decent salary for his work. In addition to mathematics, he teaches astronomy and mechanics here. The students were happy to attend his lectures, and the Venetian government continually orders various technical devices from him. He corresponds with Kepler and other authorities in the world of science and technology.

His next treatise is "Mechanics". Galileo is also constructing the world's first telescope, which changes the whole concept of environment... A serious step in science and further research. At that time it was a real sensation, and all wealthy people began to massively order telescopes for themselves, because Galileo's stories about the heavenly space seen through a telescope looked like a fantastic invention, and everyone wanted to see it with their own eyes.

Unfortunately, he did not make much money on this, as he was forced to give money as a dowry when his two sisters got married. Galileo finds himself in debt and accepts an invitation to work as an adviser at the Tuscan court from Duke Cosimo II of the Medici. So, in the life of a scientist, a turning point comes not at all in better side as he moves from Venice, in which the Inquisition was powerless, to the less hospitable Florence.

In general, the very move to Florence did not promise any danger. The work of the counselor was very quiet and calm. But in 1611 the scientist leaves Florence and goes to Rome in order to intercede for Copernicus. He is trying to convince the Pope that Copernicus' discoveries are a very important and useful contribution to the development of mankind. The priests organized a warm welcome, even approved of Galileo's recent invention - his sensational telescope.

After 2 years, Galileo continues to defend the point of view of Copernicus. He publishes several of his works, which do not implicitly hint that the church is intended for the salvation of the soul, and not in order to make or suppress scientific discoveries. This greatly agitated the Roman clergy.

In 1615 Rome openly accuses Galileo of heresy, and a year later banned heliocentrism altogether. Instead of not escalating the tension, he lets out another taunt, after which the Inquisition begins a lawsuit against Galileo Galilei.

In 1633, the scientist was arrested and put on trial. The death penalty was imminent, but it was abolished, given the fact that Galileo is an old and sick man who voluntarily renounced his own discoveries. Most likely, he was tortured to force him to do it. One way or another, soon the old scientist was sent to Archetri (on its territory there was a monastery with his daughters). Galileo spent his last years there under house arrest.

Throughout his life, Galileo was so busy with his discoveries that he practically did not devote time to his personal life. He did not even marry Marina Gamba, although she gave birth to a son and two daughters.

On January 8, 1642, the world famous scientist died, who made a real revolution in the world of astronomy and physics. He was not buried properly, but in 1737 his remains were transferred to the Basilica of Santa Croce.

Galileo Galilei's achievements:

The first astronomer who invented and used the telescope, making discoveries completely unknown by that time. He saw spots on the sun, mountains on the moon, moons of Jupiter, stars in the Milky Way, the rotation of the sun, phases of Venus, and more.
Preached the heliocentric system of the world.
He founded experimental physics, laid the foundation for classical mechanics.
He invented not only the telescope, but also the thermometer, microscope, compasses and hydrostatic scales.
Described the law of the indestructibility of a substance.

Dates from the biography of Galileo Galilei:

1564 - birth.
From 1581 to 1585 - study at the University of Pisa.
1586 - invented the hydrostatic balance.
1589 - returns as a professor to the University of Pisa.
1590 - published scientific work "On the movement".
1591 - Galileo's father dies.
From 1592 to 1610 - worked at the University of Padua (Venetian period).
1592 - invented a thermometer (at that time it had no scale).
1602 - invented the microscope.
1606 - invented the compass.
1609 - invented the telescope.
1610 - leaves for Florence (1610-1632 - Florentine period).
1611 - Visits the Pope for the first time to petition about Copernicus.
1613 - writes works that are designed to protect the interests of Copernicus.
1615 The Roman priesthood accuses Galileo of heresy.
1616 - Heliocentrism is prohibited.
From 1633 - arrest, trial, prison, later - house arrest.
1642 - death.

Interesting Galileo Galilei Facts:

When Galileo carefully observed the rings of Saturn, he thought that they were his satellites. This discovery was encrypted in the form of an anagram. Kepler decoded it incorrectly, deciding that it was about the satellites of the planet Mars.
Galileo himself gave his daughters to the monastery when they were 12 and 13 years old. One of the daughters, Livia, did not want to put up with the fate of the nun in any way, but Virginia accepted this fate humbly.
The scientist's grandson (the son of his only son) grew up to be a real religious fanatic. He was of the opinion that all of his grandfather's works were heresy, and in the end he burned all of Galileo's manuscripts.
The Vatican only admitted that it was wrong about Galileo in 1981, and agreed that the earth did indeed revolve around the sun.

ital. Galileo galilei

Italian physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher, mathematician

short biography

Galilei Galileo- an outstanding Italian scientist, the author of a large number of important astronomical discoveries, the founder of experimental physics, the creator of the foundations of classical mechanics, a gifted literary man - was born into the family of a famous musician, an impoverished nobleman on February 15, 1564 in Pisa. His full name sounds like Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de Galilei. Young Galileo was interested in art in its various manifestations since childhood, he not only fell in love with painting and music for life, but was also a real master in these areas.

Having received his education in a monastery, Galileo thought about a career as a clergyman, but his father insisted that his son learn to be a doctor, and the 17-year-old boy in 1581 began to study medicine at the University of Pisa. During his studies, Galileo showed great interest in mathematics and physics, had his own point of view on many questions, which was different from the opinion of the luminaries, and was known as a great lover of discussions. Due to the financial difficulties of the family, Galileo did not study for three years and in 1585 he was forced to return to Florence without an academic degree.

In 1586, Galileo published his first scientific work entitled "Small hydrostatic balance". Seeing the remarkable potential in the young man, he was taken under his wing by the wealthy Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte, who was interested in science, thanks to whose efforts Galileo received a paid scientific position. In 1589 he returned to the University of Pisa, but already as a professor of mathematics - there he began to work on his own research in the field of mathematics and mechanics. In 1590, his work "On Movement" was published, which criticized Aristotelian doctrine.

In 1592, a new, extremely fruitful stage began in Galileo's biography, associated with his move to the Venetian Republic and teaching at the University of Padua, a rich educational institution with an excellent reputation. The scientific authority of the scientist grew rapidly, in Padua he quickly became the most famous and popular professor, respected not only by the scientific community, but also by the government.

Galileo's scientific research received a new impetus in connection with the discovery in 1604 of a star known today as Kepler's supernova and the increased interest in astronomy in this connection. At the end of 1609 he invented and created the first telescope, with the help of which he made a number of discoveries described in the work "Star Messenger" (1610) - for example, the presence of mountains and craters on the Moon, satellites of Jupiter, etc. sensation and brought Galileo European glory. During this period, his personal life was also arranged: a civil marriage with Marina Gamba subsequently gave him three beloved children.

The fame of the great scientist did not save Galileo from material problems, which was the impetus for moving to Florence in 1610, where, thanks to the Duke Cosimo II of Medici, he managed to get a prestigious and well-paid position of court adviser with easy duties. Galileo continues to make scientific discoveries, among which were, in particular, the presence of spots on the Sun, its rotation around its axis. The camp of the scientist's ill-wishers was constantly growing, not least because of his habit of expressing his views in a harsh, polemical manner, because of his growing influence.

In 1613, the book "Letters on Sunspots" was published with an open defense of Copernicus's views on the structure of the solar system, which undermined the authority of the church, because did not coincide with the tenets of the scriptures. In February 1615, the Inquisition started a case against Galileo for the first time. Already in March of the same year, heliocentrism was officially declared a dangerous heresy, in connection with which the scientist's book was banned - with a warning to the author about the inadmissibility of further support for Copernicanism. Returning to Florence, Galileo changed his tactics, making the teaching of Aristotle the main object of his critical mind.

In the spring of 1630, the scientist sums up his many years of work in the "Dialogue on two major systems the world - Ptolemaic and Copernicus. " Published by hook or by crook, the book attracted the attention of the Inquisition, as a result of which a couple of months later it was withdrawn from sale, and its author was summoned to Rome on February 13, 1633, where until June 21, an investigation was conducted on charges of heresy. Finding himself in a difficult choice, Galileo, in order to avoid the fate of Giordano Bruno, renounced his views and spent the rest of his life under house arrest in his villa near Florence, under the strictest control of the Inquisition.

But even in such conditions, he did not stop his scientific activities, although everything that came out of his pen was censored. In 1638, his work "Conversations and Mathematical Proofs ...", secretly sent to Holland, was published, on the basis of which Huygens and Newton continued to develop the postulates of mechanics. Five recent years biographies were overshadowed by ailment: Galileo worked, being practically blind, with the help of his students.

The greatest scientist who died on January 8, 1642 was buried as a mere mortal, the Pope did not give permission to erect the monument. In 1737, his remains were solemnly reburied, according to the dying will of the deceased, in the Basilica of Santa Croce. In 1835, work was completed on the exclusion of Galileo's works from the list of prohibited literature, initiated by Pope Benedict XIV in 1758, and in October 1992, Pope John Paul II, following the results of the work of a special rehabilitation commission, officially recognized the erroneousness of the actions of the Inquisition against Galileo Galilei.

Biography from Wikipedia

Galileo Galilei(Italian. Galileo Galilei; February 15, 1564, Pisa - January 8, 1642, Arcetri) - Italian physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher, mathematician, who had a significant influence on the science of his time. He was the first to use a telescope to observe celestial bodies and made a number of outstanding astronomical discoveries. Galileo is the founder of experimental physics. With his experiments, he convincingly refuted the speculative metaphysics of Aristotle and laid the foundation for classical mechanics.

During his lifetime, he was known as an active supporter of the heliocentric system of the world, which led Galileo to a serious conflict with the Catholic Church.

early years

Galileo was born in 1564 in the Italian city of Pisa, the son of a well-born but impoverished nobleman Vincenzo Galilei, a prominent music theorist and lute player. Galileo Galilei's full name is Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de "Galilei. Galileo family members are mentioned in documents from the 14th century. Several of his direct ancestors were prior (members of the ruling council) of the Florentine Republic, and his great-great-grandfather , a famous doctor who also bore the name Galileo, in 1445 he was elected head of the republic.

The family of Vincenzo Galilei and Giulia Ammannati had six children, but four managed to survive: Galileo (the eldest of the children), the daughters of Virginia, Livia and the youngest son of Michelangelo, who later also became famous as a lute composer. In 1572, Vincenzo moved to Florence, the capital of the Duchy of Tuscany. The Medici dynasty ruling there was known for its wide and constant patronage of the arts and sciences.

Little is known about Galileo's childhood. WITH early years the boy was attracted to art; Throughout his life, he carried a love of music and drawing, which he mastered to perfection. In mature years best artists Florence - Chigoli, Bronzino, and others - consulted with him on issues of perspective and composition; Chigoli even claimed that he owed his fame to Galileo. From the writings of Galileo, one can also conclude that he has a remarkable literary talent.

Galileo received his primary education at the nearby Vallombroza monastery, where he was accepted as a novice into the monastic order. The boy loved to study and became one of the best students in the class. He considered the possibility of becoming a priest, but his father was against it.

The old building of the University of Pisa (nowadays - the High School of Normal)

In 1581, 17-year-old Galileo, at the insistence of his father, entered the University of Pisa to study medicine. At the university, Galileo also attended lectures on geometry (previously he was completely unfamiliar with mathematics) and was so carried away by this science that his father began to fear that this would interfere with the study of medicine.

Galileo was a student for less than three years; during this time he managed to thoroughly familiarize himself with the works of ancient philosophers and mathematicians and earned a reputation among teachers as an indomitable debater. Even then, he considered himself entitled to have personal opinion on all scientific issues, regardless of traditional authorities.

Probably during these years he became acquainted with the theory of Copernicus. Astronomical problems were then vividly discussed, especially in connection with the calendar reform that had just been carried out.

Soon the father's financial situation deteriorated, and he was unable to pay further for his son's education. The request to exempt Galileo from fees (this exception was made for the most capable students) was rejected. Galileo returned to Florence (1585) without receiving a degree. Fortunately, he managed to attract attention with several ingenious inventions (for example, hydrostatic balances), thanks to which he met the educated and wealthy lover of science, the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte. The Marquis, in contrast to the Pisa professors, was able to correctly assess him. Even then, del Monte said that since the time of Archimedes, the world has not seen such a genius as Galileo. Delighted with the extraordinary talent of the young man, the marquis became his friend and patron; he introduced Galileo to the Duke of Tuscan Ferdinand I de Medici and applied for a paid scientific position for him.

In 1589 Galileo returned to the University of Pisa, now a professor of mathematics. There he began to conduct independent research in mechanics and mathematics. True, his salary was assigned a minimum: 60 scant a year (the professor of medicine received 2000 scant). In 1590 Galileo wrote a treatise On Movement.

In 1591, his father died, and responsibility for the family passed to Galileo. First of all, he had to take care of the upbringing of his younger brother and the dowry of two unmarried sisters.

In 1592, Galileo received a position at the prestigious and wealthy University of Padua (Republic of Venice), where he taught astronomy, mechanics and mathematics. According to the letter of recommendation of the Venetian Doge to the university, one can judge that Galileo's scientific authority was extremely high already in these years:

Realizing the importance of mathematical knowledge and its usefulness for other main sciences, we delayed the appointment, not finding a worthy candidate. Signor Galilei, a former professor at Pisa, who is very famous and rightly recognized as the most knowledgeable in the mathematical sciences, has now expressed a desire to take this place. Therefore, we are pleased to give him the chair of mathematics for four years with 180 florins a year in salary.

Padua, 1592-1610

The years in Padua are the most fruitful period of Galileo's scientific activity. He soon became the most famous professor in Padua. Students in droves rushed to his lectures, the Venetian government constantly entrusted Galileo with the development of various kinds of technical devices, young Kepler and other scientific authorities of that time actively corresponded with him.

During these years he wrote a treatise "Mechanics", which aroused some interest and was republished in French translation... V early works and also in correspondence, Galileo gave the first sketch of a new general theory of the fall of bodies and the motion of a pendulum. In 1604, Galileo was denounced by the Inquisition - he was accused of practicing astrology and reading forbidden literature. Padua's inquisitor Cesare Lippi, who sympathized with Galileo, left the denunciation without consequences.

The reason for a new stage in Galileo's scientific research was the appearance in 1604 of a new star, now called Kepler's Supernova. This awakens everyone's interest in astronomy, and Galileo gives a series of private lectures. Having learned about the invention of the telescope in Holland, Galileo in 1609 constructs the first telescope with his own hands and directs it into the sky.

What Galileo saw was so amazing that even many years later there were people who refused to believe in his discoveries and claimed that it was an illusion or an obsession. Galileo discovered mountains on the Moon, the Milky Way disintegrated into separate stars, but the four moons of Jupiter discovered by him (1610) especially struck his contemporaries. In honor of the four sons of his late patron Ferdinand de Medici (who died in 1609), Galileo named these moons the "Medici Stars" (Latin Stellae Medicae). Now they bear a more appropriate name "Galilean satellites", the modern names of the satellites were suggested by Simon Marius in the treatise "The World of Jupiter" (lat. Mundus Iovialis, 1614).

Galileo described his first discoveries with a telescope in the essay "Star Messenger" (lat. Sidereus Nuncius), published in Florence in 1610. The book was a sensational success throughout Europe, even the crowned heads rushed to order a telescope. Galileo donated several telescopes to the Venetian Senate, which, as a token of gratitude, appointed him professor for life with a salary of 1,000 florins. In September 1610, Kepler acquired a telescope, and in December Galileo's discoveries were confirmed by the influential Roman astronomer Clavius. There is universal recognition. Galileo becomes the most famous scientist in Europe, odes are composed in his honor, where he is compared with Columbus. The French king Henry IV on April 20, 1610, shortly before his death, asked Galileo to open some star for him as well. There were, however, those who were dissatisfied. Astronomer Francesco Sizzi (Italian. Sizzi) released a pamphlet, where he stated that seven is a perfect number, and even in a person's head there are seven holes, so there can be only seven planets, and Galileo's discoveries are an illusion. Galileo's discoveries were declared illusory by the Padua professor Cesare Cremonini, and the Czech astronomer Martin Horky ( Martin Horky) told Kepler that the Bolognese scientists did not trust the telescope: “It works amazingly on the ground; deceives in heaven, for some single stars appear to be double. " Astrologers and doctors also protested, complaining that the appearance of new celestial bodies "is destructive for astrology and most of medicine", since all the usual astrological methods "will be completely destroyed."

During these years, Galileo entered into a civil marriage with the Venetian Marina Gamba (Italian Marina di Andrea Gamba, 1570-1612). He never married Marina, but became the father of a son and two daughters. He named his son Vincenzo in memory of his father, and his daughters, in honor of his sisters, Virginia and Livia. Later, in 1619, Galileo officially legalized his son; both daughters ended their lives in a monastery.

Pan-European fame and the need for money pushed Galileo to a destructive, as it later turned out, step: in 1610 he leaves the calm Venice, where he was inaccessible for the Inquisition, and moves to Florence. Duke Cosimo II Medici, son of Ferdinand I, promised Galileo an honorable and lucrative position as an adviser to the Tuscan court. He kept his promise, which allowed Galileo to solve the problem of huge debts that had accumulated after the marriage of his two sisters.

Florence, 1610-1632

Galileo's duties at the court of Duke Cosimo II were not burdensome - teaching the sons of the Tuscan duke and participating in some affairs as an advisor and representative of the duke. He is also formally enrolled as a professor at the University of Pisa, but is relieved of the tedious duty of lecturing.

Galileo continues his scientific research and discovers the phases of Venus, sunspots, and then the rotation of the Sun around its axis. Galileo often expounded his achievements (as well as his priority) in a cocky polemic style, which made him many new enemies (in particular, among the Jesuits).

Copernican defense

The growing influence of Galileo, the independence of his thinking and sharp opposition to the teachings of Aristotle contributed to the formation of an aggressive circle of his opponents, consisting of peripatetic professors and some church leaders. Galileo's ill-wishers were especially outraged by his propaganda of the heliocentric system of the world, because, in their opinion, the rotation of the Earth contradicted the texts of the Psalms (Psalm 103: 5), the verse from Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 1: 5), as well as an episode from the Book of Joshua ( Josh. 10:12), which speaks of the immobility of the earth and the movement of the sun. In addition, a detailed substantiation of the concept of the immobility of the Earth and the refutation of hypotheses about its rotation was contained in Aristotle's treatise "On the Sky" and in Ptolemy's "Almagest".

In 1611, Galileo, in a halo of his glory, decided to go to Rome, hoping to convince the Pope that Copernicanism was quite compatible with Catholicism. He was well received, elected the sixth member of the Academia dei Lincei, and met Pope Paul V, influential cardinals. I showed them my telescope and gave my explanations carefully and prudently. The cardinals created a whole commission to find out whether it is a sin to look at the sky through a pipe, but they came to the conclusion that it is permissible. It was also encouraging that the Roman astronomers openly discussed the question of whether Venus moves around the Earth or around the Sun (the phase change of Venus clearly spoke in favor of the second option).

Emboldened, Galileo, in a letter to his disciple Abbot Castelli (1613), stated that Scripture refers only to the salvation of the soul and is not authoritative in scientific matters: "no sentence of Scripture has such a coercive force as any natural phenomenon." Moreover, he published this letter, which caused the appearance of denunciations to the Inquisition. In the same 1613, Galileo published the book "Letters on Sunspots", in which he openly spoke out in favor of the Copernican system. On February 25, 1615, the Roman Inquisition opened the first case against Galileo on charges of heresy. Galileo's last mistake was the call to Rome to express the final attitude towards Copernicanism (1615).

All this caused a reaction that was the opposite of what was expected. Alarmed by the success of the Reformation, the Catholic Church decided to strengthen its spiritual monopoly - in particular, by banning Copernicanism. The position of the church is clarified by a letter from the influential Cardinal Inquisitor Bellarmino, sent on April 12, 1615, to the theologian Paolo Antonio Foscarini, the defender of Copernicanism. In this letter, the cardinal explained that the church does not object to the interpretation of Copernicanism as a convenient mathematical device, but accepting it as reality would mean recognizing that the previous, traditional interpretation of the biblical text was erroneous. And this, in turn, will undermine the authority of the church:

First, it seems to me that your priesthood and Mr. Galileo are wise to be content with what they say presumably rather than absolutely; I have always assumed that Copernicus said so too. Because if we say that the assumption about the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun allows us to represent all phenomena better than the acceptance of eccentrics and epicycles, then this will be said perfectly and does not entail any danger. For a mathematician, this is quite enough. But to assert that the Sun is in reality the center of the world and revolves only around itself, without moving from east to west, that the Earth is in the third heaven and revolves around the Sun with great speed, is very dangerous to assert not only because it means to excite irritation of all philosophers and scholastic theologians; it would be detrimental to holy faith by presenting the positions of Holy Scripture as false ...

Secondly, as you know, the [Council of Trent] forbade the interpretation of Holy Scripture contrary to the general opinion of the Holy Fathers. And if your priesthood wants to read not only the Holy Fathers, but also new commentaries on the book of Exodus, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and the book of Jesus, then you will find that everyone agrees that this must be taken literally - that the Sun is in heaven and revolves around the Earth with great speed, and the Earth is farthest from the sky and stands motionless in the center of the world. Judge for yourself, with all your prudence, can the Church allow the Scripture to be given a meaning opposite to everything that was written by the Holy Fathers and all Greek and Latin interpreters?

On February 24, 1616, eleven qualifiers (experts of the Inquisition) formally identified heliocentrism as a dangerous heresy:

To argue that the Sun stands motionless in the center of the world is an absurd opinion, false from a philosophical point of view and formally heretical, since it directly contradicts Holy Scripture.
To argue that the Earth is not in the center of the world, that it does not remain motionless and even has a daily rotation, is an equally absurd opinion, false from a philosophical and sinful from a religious point of view.

On March 5, Pope Paul V approved this decision. It should be noted that the expression "formally heretical" in the text of the conclusion meant that this opinion contradicted the most important, fundamental provisions of the Catholic faith. On the same day, the Pope approved a decree of the congregation, which included Copernicus' book in the Index of Prohibited Books "until it was corrected." At the same time, the Index includes works by Foscarini and several other Copernicans. The Sunspot Letters and Galileo's other books advocating heliocentrism were not mentioned. The decree prescribed:

... So that no one henceforth, whatever his rank and whatever position he occupies, would dare to print them or facilitate printing, keep them or read them, and everyone who has or will have them in the future will be charged with the obligation immediately upon publication of this decree to submit them to the local authorities or inquisitors.

All this time (from December 1615 to March 1616) Galileo spent in Rome, unsuccessfully trying to turn things around. On February 26, on the instructions of the Pope, Bellarmino summoned him and assured him that he was not personally in danger, but henceforth all support for the "Copernican heresy" should be stopped. As a sign of reconciliation, on March 11, Galileo was awarded a 45-minute walk with the Pope.

The church prohibition of heliocentrism, of which Galileo was convinced, was unacceptable to the scientist. He returned to Florence and began to ponder how, without formally breaking the ban, he could continue to defend the truth. He eventually decided to publish a book containing a neutral discussion of different points of view. He wrote this book for 16 years, collecting materials, honing arguments and biding his time.

Creation of new mechanics

After the fateful decree of 1616, Galileo changed the direction of the struggle for several years - now he focuses his efforts mainly on the criticism of Aristotle, whose writings also formed the basis of the medieval worldview. In 1623, Galileo's book "Assaying Master" (Italian Il Saggiatore) was published; is a pamphlet directed against the Jesuits, in which Galileo expounds his erroneous theory of comets (he believed that comets are not cosmic bodies, but optical phenomena in the Earth's atmosphere). The position of the Jesuits (and Aristotle) ​​in this case was closer to the truth: comets are extraterrestrial objects. This error did not prevent, however, Galileo from expounding and wittily arguing his scientific method, from which the mechanistic worldview of subsequent centuries grew.

In the same 1623, Matteo Barberini, an old acquaintance and friend of Galileo, was elected as the new Pope, under the name Urban VIII. In April 1624 Galileo traveled to Rome, hoping to have the edict of 1616 revoked. He was received with all honors, awarded with gifts and flattering words, but he did not achieve anything on the main issue. The edict was canceled only two centuries later, in 1818. Urban VIII especially praised the book "Assay Master" and forbade the Jesuits to continue their polemics with Galileo.

In 1624 Galileo published Letters to Ingoli; it is a response to the anti-Copernican treatise of theologian Francesco Ingoli. Galileo immediately stipulates that he is not going to defend Copernicanism, but only wants to show that it has solid scientific foundations. He used this technique later in his main book, "Dialogue on Two Systems of the World"; part of the text of Letters to Ingoli was simply transferred to Dialogue. In his consideration, Galileo equates the stars with the Sun, indicates the colossal distance to them, speaks of the infinity of the Universe. He even allowed himself a dangerous phrase: “If any point of the world can be called its [world] center, then this is the center of the revolutions of heavenly bodies; and in it, as anyone who understands these questions knows, is the Sun, not the Earth. " He also stated that the planets and the Moon, like the Earth, attract bodies located on them.

But the main scientific value of this work is the laying of the foundations of a new, non-Aristotelian mechanics, developed 12 years later in the last work of Galileo, "Conversations and Mathematical Proofs of Two New Sciences." Already in "Letters to Ingoli" Galileo clearly formulates the principle of relativity for uniform motion:

The results of the shooting will always be the same, no matter which country of the world it is directed ... this will happen because it should be the same whether the Earth is in motion or stands motionless ... Give the ship motion, and moreover, at any speed; then (if only its movement is uniform, and not fluctuating here and there) you will not notice the slightest difference [in what is happening].

In modern terminology, Galileo proclaimed the homogeneity of space (absence of the center of the world) and the equality of inertial reference frames. An important anti-Aristotelian point should be noted: Galileo's argumentation implicitly assumes that the results of terrestrial experiments can be transferred to celestial bodies, that is, the laws on Earth and in the sky are the same.

At the end of his book, Galileo, with obvious irony, expresses the hope that his writing will help Ingoli replace his objections to Copernicanism with others more in line with science.

In 1628, 18-year-old Ferdinand II, a pupil of Galileo, became Grand Duke of Tuscany; his father Cosimo II had died seven years earlier. The new duke maintained a warm relationship with the scientist, was proud of him and helped in every way.

Valuable information about Galileo's life is contained in the surviving correspondence between Galileo and his eldest daughter Virginia, who took the name of Maria Celesta... She lived in a Franciscan monastery at Arcetri, near Florence. The monastery, as it should be for the Franciscans, was poor, the father often sent his daughter food and flowers, in return the daughter made him jam, mending clothes, and copying documents. Only letters from Maria Celesta have survived - letters from Galileo, most likely, the monastery was destroyed after the process of 1633. The second daughter, Livia, in the monasticism of Arkangela, lived in the same monastery, but was often ill and did not take part in the correspondence.

In 1629, Vincenzo, the son of Galileo, married and settled with his father. The following year, Galileo had a grandson named after him. Soon, however, alarmed by another plague epidemic, Vincenzo and his family leave. Galileo is considering a plan to move to Archetri, closer to his beloved daughter; this plan came true in September 1631.

Conflict with the Catholic Church

In March 1630, the book "Dialogue on the two main systems of the world - Ptolemaic and Copernicus", the result of almost 30 years of work, is basically completed, and Galileo, deciding that the moment for its release is favorable, provides the then version to his friend, papal censor Riccardi ... For almost a year he waits for his decision, then decides to go for a trick. He adds a preface to the book, where he declares his goal to debunk Copernicanism and transfers the book to the Tuscan censorship, and, according to some information, in an incomplete and mitigated form. After receiving positive feedback, he forwards it to Rome. In the summer of 1631, he received the long-awaited permission.

At the beginning of 1632 "Dialogue" was published. The book is written in the form of a dialogue between three lovers of science: the Copernican Salviati, a neutral participant in the Sagredo and Simplicio, an adherent of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Although the book does not contain the author's conclusions, the strength of the arguments for the Copernican system speaks for itself. It is also important that the book was written not in scholarly Latin, but in "folk" italian.

Pope Urban VIII. Portrait by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, circa 1625

Galileo hoped that the Pope would treat his trick as condescendingly as earlier to the Letters to Ingoli similar in ideas, but he miscalculated. To top it off, he recklessly sends 30 copies of his book to influential clerics in Rome. As noted above, not long before (1623) Galileo came into conflict with the Jesuits; he had few defenders in Rome, and even those, assessing the danger of the situation, chose not to interfere.

Most biographers agree that in the simpleton Simplicio, the Pope recognized himself, his arguments, and flew into a rage. Historians note such characteristic features of Urban as despotism, stubbornness and incredible conceit. Galileo himself later believed that the initiative belonged to the Jesuits, who presented the Pope with an extremely tendentious denunciation of the book of Galileo. Within a few months, the book was banned and withdrawn from sale, and Galileo was summoned to Rome (despite the plague epidemic) to be tried by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. After unsuccessful attempts achieve a postponement due to poor health and the ongoing plague epidemic (Urban threatened to deliver him forcibly in shackles) Galileo obeyed, wrote a will, left the plague quarantine and arrived in Rome on February 13, 1633. Niccolini, the representative of Tuscany in Rome, at the direction of Duke Ferdinand II, settled Galileo in the embassy building. The investigation dragged on from April 21 to June 21, 1633.

Galileo before the court of the inquisition Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, 1847, Louvre

At the end of the first interrogation, the accused was taken into custody. Galileo was imprisoned for only 18 days (from 12 to 30 April 1633) - this unusual leniency was probably caused by Galileo's consent to repent, as well as the influence of the Tuscan duke, who was constantly trying to mitigate the fate of his old teacher. Taking into account his illness and advanced age, one of the service rooms in the building of the Inquisition Tribunal was used as a prison.

Historians have investigated the question of whether Galileo was tortured while imprisoned. The documents of the trial have not been published in full by the Vatican, and what has seen the light of day may have undergone preliminary editing. Nevertheless, the following words were found in the verdict of the Inquisition:

Noticing that when you answer, you do not quite frankly admit your intentions, we considered it necessary to resort to a severe test.

The verdict to Galileo (lat.)

Galileo in prison Jean Antoine Laurent

After the "test" Galileo, in a letter from prison (April 23), carefully informs that he does not get out of bed, as he is tormented by "a terrible pain in the hip." Some of Galileo's biographers suggest that torture really took place, while others consider this assumption unproven, only the threat of torture is documented, often accompanied by an imitation of the torture itself. In any case, if there was torture, it was on a moderate scale, since on April 30 the scientist was released back to the Tuscan embassy.

Judging by the surviving documents and letters, scientific topics were not discussed at the trial. The main questions were two: whether Galileo deliberately violated the edict of 1616, and whether he regrets what he had done. Three experts from the Inquisition gave a conclusion: the book violates the ban on the propaganda of the "Pythagorean" doctrine. As a result, the scientist was faced with a choice: either he would repent and renounce his "delusions", or he would suffer the fate of Giordano Bruno.

After reviewing the entire course of the case and listening to testimony, His Holiness decided to interrogate Galileo under the threat of torture and, if he resists, then after a preliminary abdication as a strongly suspected heresy ... sentenced to imprisonment at the discretion of the Holy Congregation. He was instructed not to reason more in writing or orally in any way about the movement of the Earth and the immobility of the Sun ... under pain of punishment as incorrigible.

Galileo's last interrogation took place on June 21. Galileo confirmed that he agreed to utter the renunciation required of him; this time he was not released to the embassy and was again taken into custody. On June 22, the verdict was announced: Galileo was guilty of distributing a book with a "false, heretical teaching contrary to Holy Scripture" about the movement of the Earth:

As a result of considering your guilt and your consciousness in it, we award and declare you, Galileo, for all of the above and you confessed under strong suspicion at this Holy Judgment of heresy, as possessed by the false and contrary to Holy and Divine Scripture idea that the Sun is the center of the earth's orbit and does not move from east to west, while the Earth is mobile and is not the center of the universe. We also recognize you as a disobedient church authority, which forbade you to expound, defend and pass off as a probable teaching, recognized as false and contrary to Holy Scripture ... So that such a grave and harmful sin and disobedience of yours would not remain without any reward and you would not later become even more daring, and on the contrary, it would serve as an example and a warning to others, we decided to ban the book entitled "Dialogue" by Galileo Galilei, and imprison you yourself at the Holy Judgment Seat for an indefinite period.

Galileo was sentenced to imprisonment for a period to be established by the Pope. He was not declared a heretic, but “strongly suspected of heresy”; this wording was also a grave accusation, but saved from the fire. After the pronouncement of the verdict, Galileo on his knees pronounced the text of the abdication offered to him. Copies of the verdict on the personal order of Pope Urban were sent to all universities in Catholic Europe.

Galileo Galilei, around 1630 Peter Paul Rubens

Last years

Pope did not keep Galileo in prison for long. After the verdict was passed, Galileo was settled in one of the Medici villas, from where he was transferred to the palace of his friend, Archbishop Piccolomini in Siena. Five months later, Galileo was allowed to go home, and he settled in Archetri, next to the monastery where his daughters were. Here he spent the rest of his life under house arrest and under the constant supervision of the Inquisition.

Galileo's detention regime did not differ from that of the prison, and he was constantly threatened with transfer to prison for the slightest violation of the regime. Galileo was not allowed to visit cities, although a seriously ill prisoner needed constant medical supervision. In the early years he was forbidden to receive guests on pain of being transferred to prison; subsequently, the regime was somewhat relaxed, and friends were able to visit Galileo - however, no more than one at a time.

The Inquisition followed the prisoner to the end of his life; even at the death of Galileo, two of her representatives were present. All of his published works were subject to particularly careful censorship. Note that in Protestant Holland the publication of the Dialogue continued (first publication: 1635, translated into Latin).

In 1634, the 33-year-old eldest daughter Virginia (in monasticism Maria-Celesta), a favorite of Galileo, who devotedly looked after her sick father and was acutely worried about his misadventures, died. Galileo writes that he is possessed by "boundless sadness and melancholy ... I constantly hear my dear daughter calling me." Galileo's health has deteriorated, but he continues to work vigorously in the fields of science permitted to him.

A letter from Galileo to his friend Elia Diodati (1634) has survived, where he shares news of his misadventures, points out their perpetrators (the Jesuits) and shares plans for future research. The letter was sent through a confidant, and Galileo is quite frank in it:

In Rome, I was sentenced by the Holy Inquisition to imprisonment at the direction of His Holiness ... this small town, one mile from Florence, became a place of imprisonment for me, with the strictest prohibition to go down into the city, meet and talk with friends and invite them ...
When I returned from the monastery together with a doctor who visited my sick daughter before her death, and the doctor told me that the case was hopeless and that she would not survive the next day (as it happened), I found the vicar-inquisitor at home. He came to order me, by order of the Holy Inquisition in Rome ... that I should not ask for permission to return to Florence, otherwise I would be put in a real prison of the Holy Inquisition ...
This incident and others, about which it would take too long to write, shows that the rage of my very powerful pursuers is constantly growing. And they finally wanted to reveal their face: when one of my dear friends in Rome, about two months old, in a conversation with Padre Christopher Greenberg, a Jesuit, a mathematician of this college, touched upon my affairs, this Jesuit literally told my friend the following: “ If Galileo managed to maintain the favor of the fathers of this collegium, he would live in freedom, using fame, he would not have any grief and he could write at his discretion about anything - even about the movement of the Earth, "etc. So, You see that they took up arms against me not because of this or that opinion of mine, but because I am out of favor with the Jesuits.

At the end of the letter, Galileo ridicules the ignorant, who “declare the mobility of the Earth a heresy” and informs that he intends to publish a new treatise anonymously in defense of his position, but first he wants to finish a long-conceived book on mechanics. Of these two plans, he managed to implement only the second - he wrote a book on mechanics, summarizing his earlier discoveries in this area.

Soon after the death of his daughter, Galileo completely lost his sight, but continued his scientific research, relying on his faithful students: Castelli, Torricelli and Viviani (the author of Galileo's first biography). In a letter on January 30, 1638, Galileo stated:

I do not stop, even in the darkness that engulfed me, to speculate about one or another phenomenon of nature, and I could not give my restless mind a rest, even if I wished it.

Galileo's last book was Conversations and Mathematical Proofs of Two New Sciences, which sets out the foundations of kinematics and strength of materials. In fact, the content of the book is a defeat of Aristotelian dynamics; instead, Galileo puts forward his principles of movement, tested by experience. Challenging the Inquisition, Galileo brought out the same three characters in the new book as in the previously banned "Dialogue about the two main systems of the world." In May 1636, the scientist negotiated the publication of his work in Holland, and then secretly sent the manuscript there. In a confidential letter to a friend, Count de Noel (to whom he dedicated this book), Galileo said that the new work "puts me back in the ranks of fighters." "Conversations ..." was published in July 1638, and the book came to Archetri almost a year later - in June 1639. This work became the handbook of Huygens and Newton, who completed the construction of the foundations of mechanics, begun by Galileo.

Only once, shortly before his death (March 1638), the Inquisition allowed the blind and seriously ill Galileo to leave Arcetri and settle in Florence for treatment. At the same time, on pain of prison, he was forbidden to leave the house and discuss the "cursed opinion" about the movement of the Earth. However, a few months later, after the appearance of the Dutch edition of "Conversations ...", the permit was revoked, and the scientist was ordered to return to Archetri. Galileo was going to continue "Conversations ...", having written two more chapters, but did not have time to complete his plan.

Galileo Galilei died on January 8, 1642, at the age of 78, in his bed. Pope Urban forbade the burial of Galileo in the family crypt of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. They buried him in Archetri without honors, the Pope did not allow to erect a monument either.

The youngest daughter, Livia, died in the monastery. Later, Galileo's only grandson also took monastic vows and burned the invaluable manuscripts of the scientist that he kept as godless. He was the last member of the Galilean family.

In 1737, the ashes of Galileo, as he requested, were transferred to the Basilica of Santa Croce, where on March 17 he was solemnly buried next to Michelangelo. In 1758, Pope Benedict XIV ordered the deletion of works defending heliocentrism from the Index of Forbidden Books; however, this work was carried out slowly and was completed only in 1835.

From 1979 to 1981, on the initiative of Pope John Paul II, a commission for the rehabilitation of Galileo worked, and on October 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II officially recognized that the Inquisition made a mistake in 1633, forcing the scientist to renounce Copernicus' theory.

Scientific achievements

Galileo is rightfully considered the founder of not only experimental, but - to a large extent - also theoretical physics. In his scientific method, he deliberately combined thoughtful experiment with its rational understanding and generalization, and personally gave impressive examples of such research. Sometimes, due to a lack of scientific data, Galileo was mistaken (for example, in questions about the shape of planetary orbits, the nature of comets or the causes of tides), but in the overwhelming majority of cases, his method led to the goal. It is characteristic that Kepler, who had more complete and accurate data than Galileo, drew correct conclusions when Galileo was wrong.

Philosophy and scientific method

Although there were remarkable engineers in ancient Greece (Archimedes, Heron and others), the very idea of ​​an experimental method of cognition, which should complement and confirm deductive-speculative constructions, was alien to the aristocratic spirit of ancient physics. In Europe, back in the 13th century, Robert Grossetest and Roger Bacon called for the creation of an experimental science that could describe natural phenomena in mathematical language, but before Galileo there was no significant progress in the implementation of this idea: scientific methods differed little from theological ones, and answers to scientific questions were still searched for in the books of ancient authorities. The scientific revolution in physics begins with Galileo.

With regard to the philosophy of nature, Galileo was a staunch rationalist. Galileo noted that the human mind, no matter how far it goes, will always cover only an infinitesimal part of the truth. But at the same time, according to the level of reliability, reason is quite capable of comprehending the laws of nature. In Dialogue on Two Systems of the World, he wrote:

Extensively, those in relation to the multitude of cognizable objects, and this multitude is infinite, the cognition of man is as if nothing, although he cognizes thousands of truths, since a thousand compared to infinity is, as it were, zero; but if we take knowledge intensively, then since the term "intense" means the knowledge of some truth, then I affirm that the human mind knows some truths as perfectly and with such absolute certainty that nature itself has; such are the pure mathematical sciences, geometry and arithmetic; although the Divine mind knows infinitely more truths in them ... but in those few that the human mind has comprehended, I think its knowledge is equal in objective certainty to the Divine, for it comes to an understanding of their necessity, and the highest degree of certainty does not exist.

Galileo's mind is its own judge; in the event of a conflict with any other authority, even a religious one, he must not yield:

It seems to me that when discussing natural problems, we should start not from the authority of the texts of Holy Scripture, but from sensory experiences and the necessary evidence ... I believe that everything concerning the actions of nature, which is accessible to our eyes or can be understood by means of logical evidence, should not excite doubts, much less subject to condemnation on the basis of the texts of Holy Scripture, perhaps even misunderstood.
God is no less revealed to us in natural phenomena than in the utterances of Holy Scripture ... It would be dangerous to ascribe to Holy Scripture any judgment, at least once challenged by experience.

Ancient and medieval philosophers proposed various "metaphysical essences" (substances) to explain the phenomena of nature, to which contrived properties were attributed. Galileo was not happy with this approach:

I consider the search for the essence to be a vain and impossible occupation, and the expended efforts are equally futile both in the case of distant celestial substances, and with the nearest and elementary ones; and it seems to me that both the substance of the Moon and the Earth, both spots on the Sun and ordinary clouds, are equally unknown ... [But] if one looks in vain for the substance of sunspots, this does not mean that we cannot investigate some of their characteristics, for example, place, movement, shape, size, opacity, ability to change, their formation and disappearance.

Descartes rejected this position (in his physics, the main attention was paid precisely to finding the "main reasons"), however, starting with Newton, the Galilean approach became prevalent.

Galileo is considered one of the founders of mechanism. This scientific approach considers the Universe as a gigantic mechanism, and complex natural processes as combinations of the simplest causes, the main of which is mechanical movement... The analysis of mechanical motion is at the heart of Galileo's work. He wrote in the Assay Master:

I will never begin to demand from external bodies anything other than size, figure, quantity, and more or less rapid movements in order to explain the emergence of sensations of taste, smell and sound; I think that if we eliminated ears, tongues, noses, then only figures, numbers, movements would remain, but not smells, tastes and sounds, which, in my opinion, outside a living being are nothing more than empty names ...

To design an experiment and to comprehend its results, some preliminary theoretical model of the phenomenon under study is needed, and Galileo considered mathematics as its basis, the conclusions of which he regarded as the most reliable knowledge: the book of nature "is written in the language of mathematics"; “Anyone who wants to solve problems in the natural sciences without the help of mathematics poses an insoluble problem. You should measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not. "

Galileo viewed the experience not as a simple observation, but as a meaningful and thoughtful question posed to nature. He also allowed thought experiments if their results were not in doubt. At the same time, he clearly understood that experience in itself does not give reliable knowledge, and the answer received from nature must undergo analysis, the result of which can lead to a rework of the original model or even to its replacement with another. Thus, an effective way of cognition, according to Galileo, consists in a combination of synthetic (in his terminology, composite method) and analytical ( resolutive method), sensual and abstract. This position, supported by Descartes, from that moment was established in science. Thus, science received its own method, its own criterion of truth and secular character.

Mechanics

Physics and mechanics in those years were studied on the basis of the writings of Aristotle, which contained metaphysical reasoning about the "root causes" of natural processes. Specifically, Aristotle argued:

• The rate of fall is proportional to the weight of the body.
• Movement occurs as long as the "motivating cause" (force) is in effect, and in the absence of force it stops.

While at the University of Padua, Galileo studied inertia and free fall of bodies. In particular, he noticed that the acceleration of gravity does not depend on body weight, thus refuting the first statement of Aristotle.

In his last book, Galileo formulated the correct laws of falling: speed increases in proportion to time, and paths in proportion to the square of time. In accordance with his scientific method, he immediately cited experimental data confirming the laws he discovered. Moreover, Galileo considered (on the 4th day of Conversations) a generalized problem: to study the behavior of a falling body with a nonzero horizontal initial velocity. He quite correctly assumed that the flight of such a body would be a superposition (superposition) of two " simple movements»: Uniform horizontal motion by inertia and uniformly accelerated vertical fall.

Galileo proved that the indicated, as well as any body thrown at an angle to the horizon flies in a parabola. In the history of science, this is the first solved problem of dynamics. In conclusion of the study, Galileo proved that the maximum flight range of a thrown body is achieved for a throw angle of 45 ° (earlier this assumption was expressed by Tartaglia, who, however, could not rigorously substantiate it). On the basis of his model, Galileo (back in Venice) compiled the first artillery tables.

Galileo also refuted the second of the cited laws of Aristotle, formulating the first law of mechanics (the law of inertia): in the absence of external forces, the body either rests or moves uniformly. What we call inertia, Galileo poetically called "indestructible motion imprinted." True, he allowed free movement not only in a straight line, but also in a circle (apparently, for astronomical reasons). The correct formulation of the law was later given by Descartes and Newton; nevertheless, it is generally recognized that the very concept of "inertial motion" was first introduced by Galileo, and the first law of mechanics justly bears his name.

Galileo is one of the founders of the principle of relativity in classical mechanics, which, in a slightly refined form, became one of the cornerstones of the modern interpretation of this science and was later named after him. In Dialogue on Two Systems of the World, Galileo formulated the principle of relativity as follows:

For items captured uniform movement, this latter does not seem to exist and manifests its effect only on things that do not take part in it.

Explaining the principle of relativity, Galileo puts into the mouth of Salviati a detailed and colorful (very typical for the style of scientific prose of the great Italian) description of an imaginary "experiment" carried out in the hold of a ship:

... Stock up on flies, butterflies and other similar small flying insects; let you also have a large vessel with water and small fish swimming in it; hang, further, a bucket at the top, from which water will fall drop by drop into another vessel with a narrow neck, placed at the bottom. While the ship is stationary, watch diligently how small flying animals move at the same speed in all directions of the room; the fish, as you will see, will swim indifferently in all directions; all the falling drops will fall into the substituted vessel ... Now make the ship move at low speed and then (if only the movement is uniform and without swinging in one direction or the other) you will not find the slightest change in all these phenomena and you will not be able to do any of them establish whether the ship is moving or is stationary.

Strictly speaking, Galileo's ship does not move in a straight line, but along an arc of a large circle of the surface the globe... Within the framework of the modern understanding of the principle of relativity, the frame of reference associated with this ship will only be approximately inertial, so it is still possible to reveal the fact of its movement without referring to external landmarks (although suitable measuring instruments appeared only in the 20th century ...) ...

The above discoveries of Galileo, among other things, allowed him to refute many arguments of the opponents of the heliocentric system of the world, who argued that the rotation of the Earth would noticeably affect the phenomena occurring on its surface. For example, according to geocentrists, the surface of a rotating Earth during the fall of any body would leave from under this body, shifting by tens or even hundreds of meters. Galileo confidently predicted: “Any experiments that should indicate more against, how per rotation of the Earth ".

Galileo published a study of the oscillations of a pendulum and stated that the period of oscillations does not depend on their amplitude (this is approximately true for small amplitudes). He also found that the periods of oscillation of a pendulum are related as square roots of its length. Galileo's results attracted the attention of Huygens, who used a pendulum regulator (1657) to improve the escapement of a watch; from that moment on, it became possible to make precise measurements in experimental physics.

For the first time in the history of science, Galileo raised the question of the strength of rods and beams in bending and thereby laid the foundation for a new science - the resistance of materials.

Many of Galileo's arguments are sketches of physical laws discovered much later. For example, in "Dialogue" he says that the vertical speed of a ball rolling on the surface of a complex relief depends only on its current height, and illustrates this fact with several thought experiments; now we would formulate this conclusion as the law of conservation of energy in a gravity field. He explains the (theoretically undamped) swing of the pendulum in a similar way.

In statics, Galileo introduced the fundamental concept moment of force(Italian momento).

Astronomy

In 1609, Galileo independently built his first telescope with a convex lens and a concave eyepiece. The tube magnified approximately threefold. Soon he managed to build a telescope with a magnification of 32 times. Note that the term telescope it was Galileo who introduced him to science (the term itself was suggested to him by Federico Cesi, the founder of the Accademia dei Lincei). A number of telescopic discoveries of Galileo contributed to the establishment of the heliocentric system of the world, which Galileo actively promoted, and the refutation of the views of the geocentrists Aristotle and Ptolemy.

Galileo made his first telescopic observations of celestial bodies on January 7, 1610. These observations showed that the Moon, like the Earth, has a complex relief - covered with mountains and craters. The ash light of the Moon, known since ancient times, was explained by Galileo as the result of sunlight reflected from the Earth hitting our natural satellite. All this refuted the doctrine of Aristotle about the opposition of "earthly" and "heavenly": the Earth became a body of essentially the same nature as the heavenly bodies, and this, in turn, served as an indirect argument in favor of the Copernican system: if other planets move, then naturally assume that the Earth is also moving. Galileo also discovered the libration of the moon and fairly accurately estimated the height of the lunar mountains.

Jupiter found its own moons - four satellites. Thus, Galileo refuted one of the arguments of the opponents of heliocentrism: the Earth cannot revolve around the Sun, since the Moon revolves around it. After all, Jupiter obviously had to revolve either around the Earth (as in the geocentric system) or around the Sun (as in the heliocentric system). One and a half years of observations allowed Galileo to estimate the orbital period of these satellites (1612), although an acceptable accuracy of the estimate was achieved only in Newton's epoch. Galileo proposed using observations of eclipses of Jupiter's satellites to solve the most important problem of determining longitude at sea. He himself was unable to develop an implementation of such an approach, although he worked on it until the end of his life; Cassini was the first to succeed (1681), however, due to the difficulties of observing at sea, Galileo's method was used mainly by land expeditions, and after the invention of the marine chronometer (mid-18th century), the problem was closed.

Galileo also discovered (independently of Johann Fabritius and Harriot) sunspots. The existence of spots and their constant variability refuted the thesis of Aristotle about the perfection of heaven (as opposed to the "sublunary world"). Based on the results of their observations, Galileo concluded that the Sun rotates on its axis, estimated the period of this rotation and the position of the Sun's axis.

Galileo established that Venus changes phases. On the one hand, this proved that it shines with the reflected light of the Sun (about which there was no clarity in the astronomy of the previous period). On the other hand, the order of the phase change corresponded to the heliocentric system: in Ptolemy's theory, Venus as the “lower” planet was always closer to the Earth than the Sun, and “fullness” was impossible.

Galileo also noted strange "appendages" of Saturn, but the opening of the ring was prevented by the weakness of the telescope and the rotation of the ring, which hid it from the terrestrial observer. Half a century later, the ring of Saturn was discovered and described by Huygens, who had a 92x telescope at his disposal.

Historians of science discovered that on December 28, 1612, Galileo observed the then not yet discovered planet Neptune and sketched its position among the stars, and on January 29, 1613, he observed it in conjunction with Jupiter. However, Galileo did not recognize Neptune as a planet.

Galileo showed that when observed through a telescope, the planets are visible as disks, the apparent sizes of which in various configurations change in such a ratio as follows from the Copernican theory. However, the diameter of the stars does not increase when observed with a telescope. This contradicted estimates of the apparent and real size of stars, which were used by some astronomers as an argument against the heliocentric system.

The Milky Way, which looks like a solid glow to the naked eye, disintegrated into separate stars (which confirmed Democritus's guess), and a huge number of previously unknown stars became visible.

In "Dialogue on Two Systems of the World" Galileo substantiated in detail (through the mouth of the character Salviati) why he prefers the Copernican system rather than Ptolemy:

• Venus and Mercury never find themselves in opposition, that is, in the side of the sky opposite to the Sun. This means that they revolve around the Sun, and their orbit passes between the Sun and the Earth.
• Mars has oppositions. In addition, Galileo did not reveal any phases on Mars that were noticeably different from the total illumination of the visible disk. From here and from the analysis of changes in brightness during the movement of Mars, Galileo concluded that this planet also revolves around the Sun, but in this case the Earth is inside its orbits. He made similar conclusions for Jupiter and Saturn.

Thus, it remains to choose between two systems of the world: the Sun (with the planets) revolves around the Earth or the Earth revolves around the Sun. The observed pattern of planetary motions in both cases is the same, this is guaranteed by the principle of relativity, formulated by Galileo himself. Therefore, for the choice, additional arguments are needed, among which Galileo cites the greater simplicity and naturalness of the Copernican model.

An ardent supporter of Copernicus, Galileo, however, rejected Kepler's system with elliptical planetary orbits. Note that it was Kepler's laws, together with Galileo's dynamics, that led Newton to the law universal gravitation... Galileo was not yet aware of the idea of ​​the forceful interaction of celestial bodies, considering the movement of the planets around the Sun as a natural property of them; in this he involuntarily turned out to be closer to Aristotle than, perhaps, he wanted.

Galileo explained why the earth's axis does not rotate when the earth revolves around the sun; to explain this phenomenon, Copernicus introduced a special "third motion" of the Earth. Galileo showed by experience that the axis of a freely moving top retains its direction by itself ("Letters to Ingoli"):

A similar phenomenon is evident in every body that is freely suspended, as I have shown to many; and you yourself can be convinced of this by putting a floating wooden ball in a vessel of water, which you will take in your hands, and then, stretching them out, you will begin to revolve around yourself; you will see how this ball will turn around itself in the opposite direction to your rotation; it will complete its full revolution at the same time you finish yours.

At the same time, Galileo made a serious mistake, believing that the phenomenon of tides proves the rotation of the Earth around its axis. However, he gives other serious arguments in favor of the Earth's diurnal rotation:

• It is difficult to agree that the entire Universe makes a daily revolution around the Earth (especially considering the colossal distances to the stars); it is more natural to explain the observed picture by the rotation of one Earth. Synchronous participation of planets in daily rotation would also violate the observed pattern, according to which, the further a planet is from the Sun, the slower it moves.
• Even the huge Sun is found to rotate axially.

Galileo describes here a thought experiment that could prove the rotation of the Earth: a cannon projectile or a falling body deviates slightly from the vertical during the fall; however, his calculation shows that this deviation is negligible. He made the correct observation that the rotation of the Earth must influence the dynamics of the winds. All these effects were discovered much later.

Mathematics

Probability theory includes his research on the outcomes of throwing dice. In his "Discourse on the game of dice" ("Considerazione sopra il giuoco dei dadi", time unknown, published in 1718), a fairly complete analysis of this problem is carried out.

In Conversations on Two New Sciences, he formulated the Galileo paradox: there are as many natural numbers as there are squares, although most of the numbers are not squares. This prompted further research into the nature of infinite sets and their classification; culminated in the process of creating set theory.

Other achievements

Galileo invented:

• Hydrostatic balance for determining the specific gravity of solids. Galileo described their construction in a treatise "La bilancetta" (1586).
• The first thermometer, still without a scale (1592).
• Proportional compasses used in the drawing business (1606).
• Microscope, poor quality (1612); with his help Galileo studied insects.

-- Some of Galileo's inventions --

Galileo's telescope (modern copy)

Galileo thermometer (modern copy)

Proportional compass

"Lens of Galileo", Galileo Museum (Florence)

He also studied optics, acoustics, theory of color and magnetism, hydrostatics, resistance of materials, problems of fortification. Conducted an experiment to measure the speed of light, which he considered finite (without success). He was the first to experimentally measure the density of air, which Aristotle considered equal to 1/10 of the density of water; Galileo's experiment gave a value of 1/400, which is much closer to true meaning(about 1/770). He clearly formulated the law of the indestructibility of matter.

Students

Among the students of Galileo were:

• Borelli, who continued to study the moons of Jupiter; he was one of the first to formulate the law of universal gravitation. The founder of biomechanics.
• Viviani, Galileo's first biographer, talented physicist and mathematician.
• Cavalieri, the forerunner of mathematical analysis, in whose fate Galileo's support played a huge role.
• Castelli, creator of hydrometry.
• Torricelli, who became an outstanding physicist and inventor.

Memory

In honor of Galileo are named:

• The "Galilean satellites" of Jupiter discovered by him.
• Impact crater on the Moon (-63º, + 10º).
• Crater on Mars (6 ° N, 27 ° W)
• An area with a diameter of 3200 km on Ganymede.
• Asteroid (697) Galileo.
• The principle of relativity and coordinate transformation in classical mechanics.
• NASA space probe "Galileo" (1989-2003).
• European project "Galileo" satellite navigation system.
• The unit of acceleration "Gal" (Gal) in the CGS system, equal to 1 cm / s².
• Scientific entertainment and educational TV program Galileo shown in several countries. In Russia, it has been running since 2007 on STS.
• Airport in Pisa.

In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first observations, the UN General Assembly declared 2009 the year of astronomy.

Personality ratings

Lagrange assessed Galileo's contribution to theoretical physics:

It took exceptional fortitude to extract the laws of nature from specific phenomena that were always in front of everyone's eyes, but the explanation of which, nevertheless, escaped the inquisitive gaze of philosophers.

Einstein called Galileo "the father of modern science"And gave him the following description:

Before us appears a man of extraordinary will, intelligence and courage, who, as a representative of rational thinking, is able to withstand those who, relying on the ignorance of the people and the idleness of teachers in church vestments and university robes, are trying to consolidate and defend their position. An extraordinary literary talent allows him to address the educated people of his time in such a clear and expressive language that he manages to overcome the anthropocentric and mythical thinking of his contemporaries and again return to them the objective and causal perception of the cosmos, lost with the decline of Greek culture.

The eminent physicist Stephen Hawking, born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo's death, wrote:

Galileo, perhaps more than any other individual, is responsible for the birth of modern science. The famous dispute with the Catholic Church was central to Galileo's philosophy, for he was one of the first to declare that a person has the hope of understanding how the world works, and, moreover, that this can be achieved by observing our real world.
Remaining a devoted Catholic, Galileo did not hesitate in his faith in the independence of science. Four years before his death, in 1642, while still under house arrest, he secretly sent the manuscript of his second major book, Two New Sciences, to a Dutch publishing house. It was this work, more than his support for Copernicus, that gave birth to modern science.

In literature and art

• Bertolt Brecht... Galileo's life. Play. - In the book: Bertolt Brecht. Theatre. Plays. Articles. Statements. In five volumes. - M .: Art, 1963 .-- T. 2.
• Liliana Cavani (director). Galileo (motion picture) (English) (1968). Retrieved March 2, 2009. Archived August 13, 2011.
• Joseph Losey (director). Galileo (film, adaptation of Brecht's play) (English) (1975). Retrieved March 2, 2009. Archived August 13, 2011.
• Philip Glass(composer), opera "Galileo".

On booms and postage stamps

Italy, 2000 lire banknote,
1973 year

USSR, 1964

Ukraine, 2009

Kazakhstan, 2009

On coins

In 2005, the Republic of San Marino issued a 2 Euro commemorative coin in honor of the World Year of Physics.

San Marino, 2005

Myths and alternatives

Galileo's date of death and Newton's date of birth

Some popular books claim that Isaac Newton was born exactly on the day of Galileo's death, as if taking over from him the scientific baton. This statement is the result of an erroneous confusion of two different calendars - the Gregorian in Italy and the Julian, which operated in England until 1752. If we take the modern Gregorian calendar as a basis, then Galileo died on January 8, 1642, and Newton was born almost a year later, on January 4, 1643.

"And yet it turns"

There is a well-known legend according to which, after an ostentatious renunciation, Galileo said: "And yet she turns!" However, there is no evidence of this. As historians have found, this myth was launched in 1757 by the journalist Giuseppe Baretti and became widely known in 1761 after the translation of Baretti's book into French.

Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa

According to the biography of Galileo, written by his student and secretary Vincenzo Viviani, Galileo, in the presence of other teachers, simultaneously dropped bodies of different masses from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The description of this famous experiment was included in many books, but in the 20th century, a number of authors came to the conclusion that this is a legend, based, first of all, on the fact that Galileo himself did not claim in his books that he had conducted this public experiment. Some historians, however, are inclined to believe that this experiment really took place.

It is documented that Galileo measured the time of the descent of balls along an inclined plane (1609). It should be taken into account that there were no accurate clocks at that time (Galileo used an imperfect water clock and his own pulse to measure time), therefore, rolling balls was more convenient for measurements than falling. At the same time, Galileo checked that the laws of rolling he obtained are qualitatively independent of the angle of inclination of the plane, and, therefore, they can be extended to the case of a fall.

The principle of relativity and the movement of the sun around the earth

At the end of the 19th century, the Newtonian concept of absolute space was subjected to devastating criticism, and at the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Poincaré and Albert Einstein proclaimed the general principle of relativity: it makes no sense to assert that a body is at rest or in motion, unless it is additionally clarified with respect to what it rests or moves. In substantiating this fundamental position, both authors used polemically sharp formulations. So, Poincaré in his book Science and Hypothesis (1900) wrote that the statement “The Earth rotates” has no meaning, and Einstein and Infeld in the book The Evolution of Physics pointed out that the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus are just two different agreements about coordinate systems, and their struggle is meaningless.

In connection with these new views, the mass press repeatedly discussed the question: was Galileo right in his persistent struggle? For example, in 1908, an article appeared in the French newspaper Maten, where the author stated: "Poincaré, the greatest mathematician of the century, considers Galileo's stubbornness to be wrong." Poincaré, however, back in 1904 wrote a special article "Does the Earth Rotate?" with a refutation of the opinion attributed to him about the equivalence of the systems of Ptolemy and Copernicus, and in the book "The Value of Science" (1905) he declared: "The truth for which Galileo suffered remains the truth."

As for the above remark of Infeld and Einstein, it refers to the general theory of relativity and means the fundamental admissibility of any frame of reference. However, their physical (and even mathematical) equivalence does not follow from this. From the point of view of a distant observer in a frame of reference close to inertial, the planet Solar system nevertheless, they move "according to Copernicus," and the geocentric coordinate system, although often convenient for an earthly observer, has a limited field of application. Infeld later admitted that the above phrase from the book "The Evolution of Physics" did not belong to Einstein and was generally poorly formulated, therefore "to conclude from this that the theory of relativity to some extent underestimates the Copernican case is to make an accusation that is not even worth refuting." ...

In addition, in Ptolemy's system it would have been impossible to derive Kepler's laws and the law of universal gravitation, therefore, from the point of view of the progress of science, Galileo's struggle was not in vain.

Accusation of atomism

In June 1982, the Italian historian Pietro Redondi ( Pietro redondi) discovered in the Vatican archives an anonymous denunciation (undated) accusing Galileo of defending atomism. Based on this document, he built and published the following hypothesis. According to Redondi, the Council of Trent branded atomism as heresy, and its defense by Galileo in the book "Assay Master" threatened the death penalty, so Pope Urban, seeking to save his friend Galileo, changed the accusation for a safer one - heliocentrism.

Redondi's version, which removed the blame from the Pope and the Inquisition, aroused great interest among journalists, but professional historians quickly and unanimously rejected it. Their refutation is based on the following facts.

• There is not a word about atomism in the decisions of the Council of Trent. One can interpret the interpretation of the Eucharist accepted by the Council as conflicting with atomism, and such opinions were indeed expressed, but they remained the private opinion of their authors. There was no official church prohibition of atomism (as opposed to heliocentrism), and there was no legal basis for judging Galileo for atomism. Therefore, if the Pope really wanted to save Galileo, then he should have done the opposite - to replace the accusation of heliocentrism with the accusation of supporting atomism, then instead of renouncing Galileo, he would have gotten off with an admonition, as in 1616. Note that it was during these years that Gassendi freely published books promoting atomism, and there were no objections from the church.
• Galileo's book The Assayer, which Redondi considers a defense of atomism, dates from 1623, while Galileo's trial took place 10 years later. Moreover, statements in favor of atomism are found in Galileo's book Discourse on Bodies Submerged in Water (1612). They did not arouse any interest in the Inquisition, and none of these books was banned. Finally, after the trial, under the supervision of the Inquisition, Galileo in his last book talks about atoms again - and the Inquisition, which promised to return him to prison for the slightest violation of the regime, does not pay attention to this.
• There was no evidence that the denunciation found by Redondi had any consequences.

Currently, Redondi's hypothesis among historians is considered unsubstantiated and is not discussed. The historian IS Dmitriev regards this hypothesis as nothing more than "a historical detective story in the spirit of Dan Brown." Nevertheless, in Russia this version is still vigorously defended by Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev.

Scientific works

In the original language

• Le Opere di Galileo Galilei. - Firenze: G. Barbero Editore, 1929-1939. This is a classic commented edition of Galileo's works in the original language in 20 volumes (a reprint of an earlier collection of 1890-1909), called the National Edition (Italian Edizione Nazionale). Galileo's main works are contained in the first 8 volumes of the edition.
  • Volume 1. About movement ( De Motu), about 1590.
  • Volume 2. Mechanics ( Le Meccaniche), about 1593.
  • Volume 3. Star Messenger ( Sidereus nuncius), 1610.
  • Volume 4. Discourse on bodies immersed in water ( Discorso intorno alle cose, che stanno in su l'aqua), 1612.
  • Volume 5. Letters on sunspots ( Historia e dimostrazioni intorno alle Macchie Solari), 1613.
  • Volume 6. Assay master ( Il Saggiatore), 1623.
  • Volume 7. Dialogue about two systems of the world ( Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, tolemaico e copernicano), 1632.
  • Volume 8. Conversations and mathematical proofs of two new sciences ( Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze), 1638.
• Lettera al Padre Benedetto Castelli(correspondence with Castelli), 1613.

Russian translations

• Selected works in two volumes. - M .: Nauka, 1964.
  • Volume 1: Star Messenger. Message to Ingoli. Dialogue about two systems of the world. 645 pp.
  • Volume 2: Mechanics. About bodies in water. Conversations and mathematical proofs concerning two new branches of science. 574 pp.
  • Appendices and bibliography:
    • B.G. Kuznetsov. Galileo Galilei (Essay on life and scientific work).
    • L. E. Maistrov. Galileo and the theory of probability.
    • Galileo and Descartes.
    • I. B. Pogrebissky, W. I. Frankfurt. Galileo and Huygens.
    • L. V. Zhigalova. The first mentions of Galilee in Russian scientific literature.
• Dialogue about two systems of the world. - M.-L .: GITTL, 1948.
• Mathematical proofs concerning two new branches of science related to mechanics and local movement. - M.-L .: GITTL, 1934.

  Popular biographies

Italy is the birthplace of the scientist. Galileo di Vincenzo Bonauti de Galilei was born on 15.02.1564 in Pisa, in an aristocratic family. Vincenzo Galilei, his father, played the lute and wrote scholarly articles on music. Mother, Julia Ammanati, was a housewife. Rod became impoverished over time. There is little information about his early childhood. In addition to Galileo, two more sisters (Virginia and Livia) and a younger brother (Michelangelo) grew up in the family. Galileo from an early age showed versatile talents: for drawing, literature, music, mechanics. He was interested in the structure of things. In 1572, the family was looking for better life moved to Florence, where science and art were revered, thanks to the influence of the Medici. Galileo received his primary education at the Benedictine monastery of Vallombrosa, where he became a novice. The young man was considered the best student in the class, but his father did not want to see his son as a priest.

Galileo's education and first fame

In 1581 (at the age of 17) he returned to his hometown of Pisa and entered the medical faculty of the university. There, young Galileo became interested in mathematics, which he had not studied deeply before. It turned out she attracted him more medicine. He plunged headlong into the study of the works of Archimedes, Euclid. Copernicus also influenced the formation of the type of his worldview. My father had to come to terms with the change from the medical faculty to the philosophical one. Although Galileo Galilei mastered new knowledge easily, not all teachers liked him, as he liked to defend his point of view, regardless of personality and authority ... Perhaps that is why he was not allowed to complete his studies for free (his father ran out of money). Although there was such a practice: talented students were given the opportunity to finish their studies at the expense of the university.

Galileo came back to Florence without a diploma, but he was famous thanks to his knowledge and weights, which made it possible to measure specific gravity object based on Archimedes' law. The Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte took a promising young man under his wing. The Marquis himself was strong in the exact sciences and astronomy. He introduced Galileo to Duke Ferdinand I. The activities and intelligence of the young man impressed the Duke, and he appointed him as a scholar of the court with a salary. In addition, the patron tried to get Galileo to teach at the University of Bologna. After some time (1589) he transferred to teach mathematics at the University of Pisa. There, the scientist studies mechanics in depth, conducts research, writes treatises.

Padua

After the death of his father in 1591, Galileo had to provide for the family. Since he was paid little in Pisa, he moved in 1592 to Padua and became a teacher of exact sciences (the Doge of Venice was solicited for him). Galileo was an authoritative scientist before that, but the segment of life in this ancient city is the most active. He wrote scientific works, invented and designed devices, made discoveries in astronomy. There have also been changes on the personal front. He began to live with Marina Gamba, a native of Venice, without formalizing the relationship. They had three children (a son and 2 daughters).

Florence

In 1610, due to a lack of money, the family moved to Florence, where Galileo was promised a good income at the court of the Duke of Tuscany Cosimo II. He was listed as a university professor in Pisa, but in fact taught the Duke's offspring sciences and played the role of a court adviser.

Relations with the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church has long been “grinning at him” for his scientific views, because he impudently refuted the teachings of Aristotle. After the creation of the telescope, the scientist with might and main observed the celestial bodies, and each time he was convinced of the correctness of Copernicus. Modern man has no doubts that the Earth is round and the planets revolve around the Sun. And then the view of the solar system through the eyes of Copernicus and Galileo shocked ordinary citizens. Galileo fundamentally angered the clergy when he proved the veracity of the heliocentric system, and after all, many religious postulates insisted that the Earth is static, and the Sun moves around it. The inventor had great authority in the world of science. Therefore, I decided that this fact and a sharp mind will help convince the Pope that such views do not undermine at all. Galileo went to Rome, where he was favorably received, the telescope was tested, but when he began to insist on the veracity of the heliocentric system, the saints rebelled. The country at that time was subordinated to the powerful Catholic Church, which influenced everything. By his appeal to Castelli (a follower), where he proved his innocence regarding religion and his worldview, Galileo provoked the Inquisition to start persecuting him. Denunciations have become more frequent. And the Sunspot Letters, where he defended the Copernican system, gave rise to a case.

Important! In 1616, experts from the Inquisition passed the verdict that heliocentrism was heresy. The scientist himself has not yet been touched, but the teaching was banned.

Galileo had strong patrons, but the execution, which took place not so long ago, cooled his ardor. For many years he worked on a work in which he tried to defend his positions without incurring the wrath of the church. The next Pope, Urban VIII, was a longtime friend of his, and Galileo approached him in the hope of repealing the decree. The Pope accepted him amicably, but did not share his ideas. When, in 1632, the scientist released the "Dialogue on the two systems of the world", the Inquisition again took on it. The published book was soon seized, and Galileo was ordered to go to Rome. He did not feel well, but he had to go, otherwise he would have been pulled in shackles. There were interrogations, investigation, possibly torture, imprisonment. As a result, the scientist was declared “highly suspected of heresy” and imprisoned indefinitely. After a while, his punishment was mitigated, given his venerable age and friendship with the Pope, Archbishop Piccolomini, and was allowed to live in the Medici estate. And after that, they were released to live out their days in Archetri, where his daughters served in the monastery.The Inquisition was vigilantly watching him, not allowing him to receive guests and leave for the city.

The last years of the scientist

Galileo became discouraged after the death of his daughter Virginia, who looked after him, his health deteriorated significantly. The onset of depression and loss of vision crippled the scientist, but he could not give up science, although he was engaged in it within the framework allowed by the Inquisition. His last opus was Conversations and Mathematical Proofs of Two New Sciences. He appeared in Holland, without the knowledge of the church. 08.01.1642 Galileo Galilei died at the age of 78. He was buried in Arcetri quietly by order of the Holy See, although according to the will, the last resting place of the scientist's remains was to be the crypt in the Basilica of Santa Croce, where his entire family rested. Almost 100 years later, his remains were transferred to the basilica and buried next to.But the Holy See officially admitted its mistake only in 1992.

Inventions

Even as a child, Galileo was fascinated by mechanics, he tried to figure out how objects are arranged, thanks to which they function. The scientist constructed models of mechanisms, and they were effective:

1. Hydrostatic balancebecame the first invention. They were intended to determine the center of gravity and density of solids, to determine the composition of metal alloys. In 1586, Galileo described the principle of their operation and purpose in the essay "Small Scales", thanks to which he became famous in scientific circles. It was after this first glory that the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte began to patronize him.
2. Thermometeralso considered an invention of Galileo ("thermoscope", 1592). The thermometer looked like a small glass sphere with a soldered transparent tube, which was immersed in a liquid. When the air in the ball was warmed up (by hand warmth or a burner), the air displaced the liquid in the tube. As the temperature rises, the liquid level decreases. The thinner the tube, the more accurately minor temperature rises could be seen. It is believed that this device was later continued to be developed by Fernando Medici (apprentice).
3. Telescopeis one of the most famous inventions of Galileo. Although the "telescope" was used before, but it was the scientist who began to study celestial bodies with it. He owes the telescope his astronomical discoveries, and the subsequent persecutions of the Inquisition as well. The telescope was a 3x magnification device (he later made 32x magnification) with a convex objective and a concave eyepiece. With his help, he examined and described the visible side of the Moon, discovered the moons of Jupiter (4 of them), and also that the Milky Way is a separate star. He also assured that our planet, like others, revolves around the Sun. Scientist discovered and described blackouts on the surface daylight, which he later outlined in his treatise. Galileo found out that they are located closer to the Sun than our planet, examined the rings and. The scientist learned that the Sun and the Earth revolve around their own axis, the satellites revolve around their planets, and the planets revolve around the Sun. Observations of the Universe finally convinced Galileo of the correctness of Copernicus's point of view.
4. Microscope design("The little eye") is also attributed to Galileo. It consisted of a convex and a concave lens. Although the device did not give a multiple reduction, the scientist successfully examined insects with it. He showed his discovery at the Academy of Dei Lingchei.
5. Compassas a new invention of a scientist was introduced in scientific circles in 1606. Movable legs with a center of rotation allowed to change the scale of objects, which began to be used in architecture and when creating drawings.

Advances in science

Galileo Galilei was such a brilliant scientist that he left a significant mark in various branches of science.

Physics

He was the founder of experimental physics. The significance of his discoveries can hardly be overestimated. He owns 2 principles of mechanics:

• relativityfor uniform and straight movement;
• permanenceacceleration of gravity.

This base was taken as a basis, Einstein and other scientists, creating their discoveries.In addition, Galileo substantiated other laws of physics concerning inertia, free fall, oscillation period, and motion of bodies under certain conditions. At that time, science did not yet know the difference between speed and acceleration, and Galileo realized this by throwing objects of different weights and sizes from a height. He generally discovered the law of inertia with the help of only speculative conclusions, imagining a ball moving along an inclined plane. When he watched the objects rolling down the slope, he measured the time by his pulse.

Important! The calculation of the pendulum oscillation formula was later applied to the creation of a pendulum clock.

Mathematics

Galileo successfully applied his knowledge of mathematics in other sciences. In addition, he presented his interesting conclusions about the theory of probability in the work "Discourse on the game of dice." Also, the scientist in “Conversations about two new sciences” presented his research and calculations on the topic of natural numbers and their squares.

Philosophy and worldview

In short, his main ideas about the vision of the world are that it exists regardless of our consciousness. Matter is constant and the universe is infinite. In the surrounding world, nothing disappears and does not arise out of nowhere. There are simply changes in the state of natural objects or their components. Matter, which is in constant motion, is a complex of atoms that are indivisible. And all movements in nature, space, obey the laws of mechanics. According to Galileo, the goal of science is to find the causes of natural phenomena. Observation and experience are the basis of knowledge.Many of his discoveries came to light only due to the fact that he relied on his own experiences, observations, experiments, and not on dogmas established by recognized authorities. True philosophers Galileo considered those who “study the book of nature” themselves, and did not cram what the recognized “luminaries” of science claimed.

Important! Despite his progressive scientific knowledge and discoveries, Galileo was an obedient Catholic and yet admitted the divine principle in the cause of things. He clearly distinguished between faith and science.

His thoughts and research were expressed in numerous essays, treatises, letters to colleagues, friends and patrons. They emphasize his undoubted literary gift. He wrote in Italian, although he knew Latin very well. The scientist expounded his thoughts so clearly and easily, knew how to write brightly and intelligibly that his scientific works can be considered literary works. Galileo Galilei can rightfully be considered responsible for the birth of modern science. Remaining a devoted Catholic, he nevertheless defended his point of view until his death and published many works that were taken as a basis by other scientists of the following centuries. This gave a great impetus to the development of all branches of science. Galileo Galilei is admired all over the world not only as one of the most smart people of his time, but also as one of the most daring. Find out even more interesting facts from the biography of Galileo Galilei from the video below.

February 15 marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of the great Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer and philosopher Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), one of the founders of modern science. We have prepared a story about 14 interesting facts about the life and scientific activities of the founder of experimental physics, with whom modern physics began in the 17th century.

1. The Inquisition tried Galileo for a book about the Sun and the Earth

Domenico Tintoretto. Galileo Galilei. 1605-1607

The reason for the inquisition process of 1633 was the just published book of Galileo "Dialogue on the two greatest systems of the world Ptolemaic and Copernicus", where he proved the truth of heliocentrism and argued with peripatetic (ie, Aristotelian physics), as well as with the Ptolemaic system, according to which in the center of the world is the motionless earth. This idea of ​​the structure of the world was then adhered to by the Catholic Church.
The main claim of the Inquisition to Galileo was his confidence in the objective truth of the heliocentric system of the world. Moreover, the Catholic Church for a long time had nothing against Copernicanism, provided that it would be interpreted simply as a hypothesis or a mathematical assumption, which simply makes it possible to better describe the world around us (“save phenomena”), without pretending to be objective truthfulness and reliability. Only in 1616, more than 70 years after its publication, Copernicus's book "De revolutionibus" ("On conversions") was included in the "Index of Forbidden Books".

2. Galileo was accused of diminishing the authority of the Bible

Giuseppe Bertini. Galileo shows the telescope to the Venetian doge. 1858

The Inquisition blamed Galileo for exceeding the powers of reason and belittling the authority of Holy Scripture. Galileo was a rationalist who believed in the power of reason in the matter of knowing nature: reason, according to Galileo, learns the truth "with the certainty that nature itself has." The Catholic Church believed that any scientific theory is only hypothetical in nature and cannot achieve a perfect knowledge of the secrets of the universe. Galileo was convinced of the opposite: “... the human mind cognizes some truths as perfectly and with the same absolute certainty that nature itself has: such are the pure mathematical sciences, geometry and arithmetic; although the Divine mind knows infinitely more truths in them ... but in those few that the human mind has comprehended, I think his knowledge is equal in objective certainty to the Divine, for it comes to an understanding of their necessity, and the highest degree of certainty does not exist. "
According to Galileo, in the event of a conflict in the knowledge of nature with any other authority, including even with the Holy Scripture, the mind should not yield: “It seems to me that when discussing natural problems we should go not from the authority of the texts of Holy Scripture, but from sensory experiences and the necessary evidence ... I believe that everything concerning the actions of nature, which is accessible to our eyes or can be understood by means of logical evidence, should not raise doubts, much less be condemned on the basis of the texts of Holy Scripture, maybe even misunderstood. God is no less revealed to us in natural phenomena than in the utterances of Holy Scripture ... It would be dangerous to ascribe to Holy Scripture any judgment, at least once challenged by experience. "

3. Galileo considered himself a good Catholic

Giovanni Lorenzo Bertini. Pope Urban VIII. OK. 1625

Galileo himself considered himself a faithful son of the Catholic Church and did not intend to enter into conflict with it. Initially, Pope Urban VIII patronized Galileo and his scientific endeavors for a long time. They were in good relationship, even when the Pope was Cardinal Matfeo Barberini. But by the time of the inquisition process over the great physicist Urban VIII suffered a series of serious failures, he was accused of a political alliance with the Protestant king of Sweden Gustav-Adolphus against Catholic Spain and Austria. Also, the authority of the Catholic Church was seriously undermined by the then marching Reformation. Against this background, when Urban VIII was informed about Galileo's "Dialogue", the annoyed Pope even believed that one of the participants in the dialogue, Aristotle Simplicio, whose arguments are smashed to smithereens during the conversation, is a caricature of himself. The pope's anger was combined with calculation: the inquisition process was to demonstrate the unbroken spirit of the Catholic Church and the counter-reformation.

4. Galileo was not tortured, but he was threatened with torture

Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury. Galileo before the court of the Inquisition. 1847

Galileo was threatened with torture during the 1633 trial if he did not renounce his "heretical" belief that the earth moves around the sun. Some historians still think that torture could have been applied to Galileo on a "moderate scale", but most are inclined to believe that it was not. He was threatened with verbal torture (territio verbalis), without intimidation through a real demonstration of torture instruments (territio realis). However, Galileo decisively renounced the teachings of Copernicus, and there was no need to torture him. The final sentence formula left Galileo "under strong suspicion of heresy" and ordered him to purify himself by renunciation. His "Dialogue on the Two Greatest Systems of the World" by the Catholic Church was included in the "Index of Forbidden Books", and Galileo himself was also sentenced to a prison term set by the Pope.
In general, in the story with Galileo, the Catholic Church behaved in a certain sense rather moderately. During the trial in Rome, Galileo lived with the Florentine ambassador at the Villa Medici. The living conditions there were far from prison. After his abdication, Galileo immediately returned (the pope did not keep Galileo in prison) to the villa of the Tuscan duke in Rome, and then through he moved to his friend, the Archbishop of Siena, his friend Ascanio Piccolomini and settled in his palace.

5. The Inquisition burned not Galileo, but Giordano Bruno

In this regard, let us clarify, as in the case of Copernicus, that the Inquisition burned at the stake not Galileo, but Giordano Bruno.
This Italian Dominican monk, philosopher and poet, was burned in 1600 in Rome not just for his belief in the truth of the Copernican system of the world. Bruno was a conscientious and stubborn heretic (which, perhaps, does not justify, but at least somehow explains the actions of the Inquisition). Here is the text of the denunciation sent by his disciple, the young Venetian aristocrat Giovanni Mocenigo, to Bruno to the Inquisition: “I, Giovanni Mocenigo, report on the duty of my conscience and by order of my confessor, which I heard many times from Giordano Bruno when I spoke with him in my house, that the world is eternal and there are endless worlds ... that Christ performed imaginary miracles and was a magician, that Christ did not die of his own free will and, as far as he could, tried to avoid death; that there is no retribution for sins; that souls, created by nature, pass from one living being to another. He talked about his intention to become the founder of a new sect called "New Philosophy." He said that the Virgin Mary could not give birth; monks dishonor the world; that they are all donkeys; that we have no proof of whether our faith has merit before God. "
For six years, Giordano Bruno was imprisoned in Rome, refusing to admit his beliefs were a mistake. When Bruno was sentenced to subject him to "the most merciful punishment and without shedding blood" (burning alive), in response the philosopher and heretic declared to the judges: "Burning does not mean refuting!"

6. Galileo did not utter the famous phrase "But it still turns!"

The fact that Galileo allegedly said the famous phrase "But it still turns!" (Eppur si muove!) Immediately after his abdication is just a beautiful legend created by the Italian poet, publicist and literary critic Giuseppe Baretti in the middle of the 18th century. It is not confirmed by any documentary data.
In fact, Galileo ended his abdication in the Roman church Sancta Maria sopra Minerva ("St. Mary triumphs over Athena Minerva") on June 22, 1633 with the following words: strong arguments, without giving their final refutation, as a result of this, I was recognized by this holy court as highly suspected of heresy, as if I adhere and believe that the Sun is the center of the world and is motionless, while the Earth is not the center and moves. And therefore, desiring to banish from the thoughts of your Eminences, as well as from the mind of every devoted Christian, this strong suspicion, legitimately agitated against me, I renounce from a pure heart and with an unfeigned faith, I curse, I declare the aforementioned delusions and heresies hateful, and in general everything and every other of the aforementioned holy church, delusions, heresies and sectarian teachings. "

7. Galileo invented the telescope

Galileo was the first to use a telescope (telescope) to observe the sky. The discoveries made by him in 1609-1610 constituted a real milestone in astronomy. With the help of a telescope, Galileo is the first to discover that the Milky Way is a giant cluster of stars and that Jupiter has moons. These were the four largest satellites of Jupiter - Europa, Ganymede, Io and Callisto, nicknamed after their discoverer Galilean (today astronomers have 67 satellites at the largest planet in the solar system).
Galileo saw through the telescope the uneven, hilly surface of the moon, mountains and craters on its surface. He also observes sunspots, the phases of Venus and sees Saturn as three-faced (what he at first also took for the satellites of Saturn turned out to be the edges of his famous rings).

8. Galileo proved that Aristotle was wrong in his views on the Earth and the Moon and changed man's ideas about the Earth and space.

In the history of science, there have been very few events similar to this series of discoveries in terms of the public resonance caused by it and the impact on the thinking of people. Before Galileo, the dominant positions in European science and culture were occupied by Aristotelianism. According to Aristotelian physics, there was a radical difference between the superlunar and sublunar worlds. If “under the Moon”, in the earthly world, everything is perishable and subject to change and destruction, then in the above-moon world, in the sky, according to Aristotle, ideal laws reign, and all celestial bodies are eternal and perfect, are ideally smooth. Galileo's discoveries, in particular, the contemplation of the uneven, hilly surface of the Moon, was one of the decisive steps towards understanding that the entire cosmos or the world as a whole is arranged the same, that the same laws operate everywhere in it.

By the way, it is interesting to note a significant difference between the impression that the contemplation of the moon made on Galileo's contemporaries and which it makes on us today. Our contemporary, looking at the Moon through a telescope, is amazed at how different the Moon is from the Earth: he, first of all, pays attention to a somewhat dull, gray and waterless surface. In the days of Galileo, on the contrary, people were amazed at how much the Moon, it turns out, is similar to the Earth. For us, the idea of ​​a physical relationship between the Earth and the Moon has already become trivial. For Galileo, the ridges and craters on the Moon were a clear refutation of the Aristotelian opposition of celestial bodies and the Earth.

10. Galileo changed our understanding of space and the movement of bodies

The main idea of ​​Galileo's scientific work was the idea of ​​the world as an ordered system of bodies that move relative to each other in a homogeneous space devoid of privileged directions or points. For example, what is considered top or bottom, according to Galileo, depends on the selected frame of reference. In Aristotelian physics, the world was a limited, space where the top or bottom was clearly distinguished. All bodies either rested in their "natural places", or moved towards them. Homogeneity of space, relativity of motion - these were the principles of the new scientific picture the world laid down by Galileo. In addition, for Aristotle, rest was more important and better than movement: his body, which was not acted upon by forces, is always at rest. Galileo, on the other hand, introduced the principle of inertia (if forces do not act on a body, it is at rest or evenly moves), which equalized rest and motion. Now moving at a constant speed does not require a reason. This was the greatest revolution in the teaching of movement, which laid the foundation for a new science. Galileo considered the question of the finiteness or infinity of the world to be insoluble.

11. Galileo first connected physics with mathematics

Galileo's most important innovation in science was his desire to mathematize physics, to describe the world around him not in the language of qualities, as in Aristotelian physics, but in the language of mathematics. Galileo wrote: “I will never begin to demand from external bodies anything other than size, figure, quantity and more or less rapid movements in order to explain the emergence of sensations of taste, smell and sound. I think that if we removed ears, tongues, noses, then only figures, numbers, movements would remain, but not smells, tastes and sounds, which, in my opinion, outside of a living being are nothing more than an empty opinion ” ... And when the famous physicist, Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1979 Steven Weinberg says that the essence of modern physics is a quantitative understanding of phenomena, it is important to know that the basis for this was laid by Galileo Galilei in his experiments on measuring the motion of stones falling from the top of the tower, the rolling of balls along an inclined plane, etc.

12. Galileo's physics is based on ideas that cannot be tested

Galileo is considered the founder of experimental natural science, when science turns from purely logical, speculative theorizing to direct observation of nature and experimentation with it. Meanwhile, the reader of Galileo's works is amazed at how often he resorts to mental experiments. They have the ability to prove their truth even before their actual implementation. Galileo seems to be convinced of their truth even before any experience.
This suggests that classical physics, the foundations of which were laid by Galileo, is not a premiseless and therefore the only correct observation of nature "as it is." It itself rests on certain fundamental speculative assumptions. After all, the foundations of Galileo's physics are built from fundamentally unobservable elements: infinite inertial motion, the motion of a material point in emptiness, the motion of the Earth, etc. It was just Aristotelian physics that was closer to immediate evidence: the difference between the top and bottom in space, the movement of the Sun around the Earth, the rest of the body, if external forces do not act on it, etc.

13. Galileo's trial proved that the objects of faith and science should not be confused

After all, the physics of Aristotle, like the system of Ptolemy, is a heritage of antiquity. But the doctrine of the movement of the earth cannot be a theological question. The dogmas should concern the area of ​​faith, where science does not have access. For example, in the "Creed" there is not a single definition that could be scientifically confirmed or refuted.

14. The Church admitted her mistakes in the Galileo case

In 1758, Pope Benedict XIV ordered the deletion of works that defended heliocentrism from the Index of Forbidden Books. This work was carried out slowly and was completed only in 1835.
Voices about the need to rehabilitate Galileo sounded at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Later, Pope John Paul II took over the rehabilitation of Galileo. In 1989, Cardinal Poupard said about the condemnation of Galileo: “In condemning Galileo, the Holy Office acted sincerely, fearing that the recognition of the Copernican revolution posed a threat to the Catholic tradition. But, that was a mistake, and it is necessary to honestly admit it. Today we know that Galileo was right in upholding Copernicus's theory, although the debate over his arguments continues today. "

Galileo's biography

Galileo was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa (a city not far from Florence) in the family of a well-born but impoverished nobleman Vincenzo Galil, a music theorist and lute player. Galileo's clan was from Florence, belonged to its richest bourgeois families who ruled the city. One of the great-great-grandfathers of Galileo was even a "standard bearer of justice" (gofaloniere di giustizia), the head of the Florentine Republic, as well as a renowned physician and scientist.
In Pisa, Galileo Galilei graduated from the university, his first scientific research took place here, and here at the age of 25 he took the department of mathematics.
When Galileo lived in Padua (1592-1610), he entered into an unmarried marriage with the Venetian Marina Gamba and became the father of a son and two daughters. Later, in 1619, Galileo officially legalized his son. Both daughters ended their lives in a monastery, where they left, because, due to their illegitimacy, they could not count on a successful marriage and a good dowry.
In 1610 he moved to Florence to the Tuscan Duke Cosimo Medici II, who pays him a good salary as his adviser at court. This helps Galileo pay off the huge debts he had accumulated due to the marriage of his two sisters.

Galileo spent the last nine years of his life under the supervision of the Inquisition, which limited him in scientific contacts and travel.

He settled in Archetri next to the monastery where his daughters were staying, and he was forbidden to visit other cities. Nevertheless, Galileo was still engaged in scientific research. When he died on January 8, 1642 in the arms of his disciples Viviani and Torricelli, Pope Urban VIII prohibited the solemn funeral, and Cardinal Francesco Barberini (the pope's nephew) sent the following message to the Pope's nuncio in Florence: “His Holiness, in accordance with the Eminences I have indicated, decided that You, with your usual art, will be able to convey to the Duke's attention that it is not good to build a mausoleum for the corpse of someone who was punished by the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition and died while serving this sentence, for this could confuse good people and damage their confidence in the piety of His Highness ... But, if you still fail to turn the Grand Duke away from such a plan, you will need to warn that the epitaph or inscription that will be on the monument should not contain such expressions that could affect the reputation of this tribunal. And you will have to give the same warning to the one who will read the eulogy ... "
Many years later, in 1737, Galileo was nevertheless buried in the tomb of Santa Croce next to Michelangelo, as they intended to do at first.

On the H. J. Detouche splash screen. Galileo Galilei displaying his telescope to Leonardo Donato

Galileo Galilei is the greatest thinker of the Renaissance, the founder of modern mechanics, physics and astronomy, a follower of ideas, a predecessor.

The future scientist was born in Italy, the city of Pisa on February 15, 1564. Father Vincenzo Galilei, who belonged to an impoverished family of aristocrats, played the lute and wrote treatises on music theory. Vincenzo was a member of the Florentine Camerata society, whose members sought to revive the ancient Greek tragedy. The result of the activities of musicians, poets and singers was the creation of a new genre of opera at the turn of the 16th-17th centuries.

Mother Giulia Ammannati ran the household and raised four children: the eldest Galileo, Virginia, Livia and Michelangelo. The youngest son followed in his father's footsteps and later became famous as a composer. When Galileo was 8 years old, the family moved to the capital of Tuscany, the city of Florence, where the Medici dynasty flourished, known for its patronage of artists, musicians, poets and scientists.

At an early age, Galileo was sent to school at the Benedictine monastery of Vallombrosa. The boy showed aptitude for drawing, learning languages ​​and exact sciences. From his father Galileo inherited an ear for music and the ability to composition, but the real young man was attracted only by science.

Studies

At the age of 17, Galileo travels to Pisa to study medicine at the university. A young man, in addition to the main subjects and medical practice, carried away attending math classes. The young man discovered the world of geometry and algebraic formulas, which influenced Galileo's worldview. During the three years that the young man studied at the university, he thoroughly studied the works of ancient Greek thinkers and scientists, and also got acquainted with the heliocentric theory of Copernicus.

After a three-year stay at an educational institution, Galileo was forced to return to Florence due to the lack of funds for further education from his parents. The university leadership did not make concessions to the talented young man, did not give him the opportunity to complete the course and get an academic degree. But Galileo already had an influential patron, the Marquis Guidobaldo del Monte, who admired Galileo's talent for invention. The aristocrat pleaded for the ward before the Tuscan duke Ferdinand I of the Medici and provided the young man with a salary at the court of the ruler.

Work at the university

The Marquis del Monte helped the talented scientist get a teaching position at the University of Bologna. In addition to lectures, Galileo conducts fruitful scientific activities. The scientist deals with questions of mechanics and mathematics. In 1689, the thinker returned to the University of Pisa for three years, but now as a teacher of mathematics. In 1692 he moved to the Venetian Republic, the city of Padua for 18 years.

Combining teaching at a local university with scientific experiences, Galileo publishes the books "On Movement", "Mechanics", where he refutes ideas. During these years, one of the important events- a scientist invents a telescope, which made it possible to observe the life of heavenly bodies. The astronomer described the discoveries made by Galileo with the help of a new device in the treatise "Star Messenger".

Returning in 1610 to Florence, under the care of the Tuscan duke Cosimo Medici II, Galileo published the essay "Letters on sunspots", which was criticized by the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Inquisition acted on a large scale. And the followers of Copernicus were among the zealots of the Christian faith on a special account.

In 1600 he was already executed at the stake, which never renounced his own views. Therefore, the Catholics considered the works of Galileo Galilei provocative. The scientist himself considered himself an exemplary Catholic and did not see a contradiction between his works and the Christocentric picture of the world. The astronomer and mathematician considered the Bible to be a book contributing to the salvation of the soul, and not at all a scientific cognitive treatise.

In 1611, Galileo went to Rome to demonstrate the telescope to Pope Paul V. The scientist presented the device as correctly as possible and even received the approval of metropolitan astronomers. But the request of the scientist to make the final decision on the question of the heliocentric system of the world decided his fate in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The Papists declared Galileo a heretic, and the indictment was launched in 1615. The concept of heliocentrism was officially declared false by the Roman Commission in 1616.

Philosophy

The main postulate of Galileo's worldview is the recognition of the objectivity of the world, regardless of the subjective perception of man. The universe is eternal and endless, initiated by a divine first impulse. Nothing in space disappears without a trace, there is only a change in the form of matter. The material world is based on the mechanical movement of particles, by studying which you can learn the laws of the universe. Therefore, scientific activity should be based on experience and sensory knowledge of the world. According to Galileo, nature is the true subject of philosophy, comprehending which one can approach the truth and the fundamental principle of all that exists.

Galileo was an adherent of two methods of natural science - experimental and deductive. Using the first method, the scientist sought to prove hypotheses, the second assumed a sequential movement from one experience to another, in order to achieve the completeness of knowledge. In his work, the thinker relied primarily on teaching. In criticizing the views, Galileo did not reject the analytical method used by the philosopher of antiquity.

Astronomy

Thanks to the telescope invented in 1609, which was created using a convex objective and a concave eyepiece, Galileo began observing celestial bodies. But the threefold increase in the first instrument was not enough for the scientist for full-fledged experiments, and soon the astronomer creates a telescope with 32x magnification of objects.

Galileo Galilei's inventions: the telescope and the first compass

The first luminary, which Galileo studied in detail with the help of a new device, was the Moon. The scientist discovered many mountains and craters on the surface of the Earth's satellite. The first discovery confirmed that the Earth was physical properties does not differ from other celestial bodies. This was the first refutation of Aristotle's assertion about the difference between earthly and heavenly nature.

The second major discovery in the field of astronomy concerned the discovery of four moons of Jupiter, which in the 20th century was already confirmed by numerous space photos. Thus, he refuted the arguments of the opponents of Copernicus that if the Moon revolves around the Earth, then the Earth cannot revolve around the Sun. Galileo, due to the imperfection of the first telescopes, could not establish the rotation period of these satellites. The final proof of the rotation of Jupiter's moons was put forward 70 years later by the astronomer Cassini.

Galileo discovered the presence of sunspots, which he observed for a long time. Having studied the luminary, Galileo concluded that the Sun rotated around its own axis. Observing Venus and Mercury, the astronomer determined that the orbits of the planets are closer to the Sun than Earth. Galileo discovered the rings of Saturn and even described the planet Neptune, but he did not succeed in making progress in these discoveries due to imperfect technology. Observing the stars of the Milky Way through a telescope, the scientist made sure of their immense number.

Experientially and empirically, Galileo proves that the Earth revolves not only around the Sun, but also around its axis, which further strengthened the astronomer in the correctness of Copernicus's hypothesis. In Rome, after a hospitable reception at the Vatican, Galileo became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, which was founded by Prince Cesi.

Mechanics

According to Galileo, the basis of the physical process in nature is mechanical movement. The scientist considered the universe as a complex mechanism consisting of the simplest reasons. Therefore, mechanics became the cornerstone of Galileo's scientific work. Galileo made many discoveries in the field of mechanics itself, and also determined the directions of future discoveries in physics.

The scientist was the first to establish the law of falling and to confirm it empirically. Galileo discovered the physical formula for the flight of a body moving at an angle to a horizontal surface. The parabolic movement of the thrown object was important for the calculation of artillery tables.

Galileo formulated the law of inertia, which became the fundamental axiom of mechanics. Another discovery was the substantiation of the principle of relativity for classical mechanics, as well as the calculation of the formula for the oscillation of pendulums. Based on the latest research, the first pendulum clock was invented in 1657 by the physicist Huygens.

Galileo was the first to draw attention to the resistance of the material, which gave impetus to the development of an independent science. The scientist's reasoning later formed the basis of the laws of physics about the conservation of energy in the field of gravity, the moment of force.

Mathematics

Galileo in mathematical judgments approached the idea of ​​the theory of probability. The scientist outlined his own research in this regard in the treatise "Discourse on the game of dice", which was published 76 years after the death of the author. Galileo became the author of the famous mathematical paradox about natural numbers and their squares. Galileo recorded his calculations in Conversations on Two New Sciences. The developments formed the basis of the theory of sets and their classification.

Conflict with the church

After 1616, a turning point in Galileo's scientific biography, he was forced to go into the shadows. The scientist was afraid to express his own ideas explicitly, therefore the only book Galileo published after Copernicus was declared a heretic, was the work of 1623 "The Assayer". After the change of power in the Vatican, Galileo perked up, he believed that the new Pope Urban VIII would treat Copernican ideas more favorably than his predecessor.

But after the appearance in print in 1632 of the polemical treatise "Dialogue on the two main systems of the world", the Inquisition again initiated a process against the scientist. The accusation story repeated itself, but this time it ended much worse for Galileo.

Personal life

While living in Padua, the young Gallileo met Marina Gamba, a citizen of the Venetian Republic, who became the scientist's common-law wife. The Galileo family had three children - the son of Vincenzo and the daughters of Virginia and Livia. Since the children appeared out of wedlock, the girls subsequently had to become nuns. At the age of 55, Galileo managed to legitimize only his son, so the young man was able to marry and give his father a grandson, who later, like his aunt, became a monk.

Galileo Galilei was outlawed

After the Inquisition outlawed Galileo, he moved to a villa in Arcetri, which was not far from the monastery of his daughters. Therefore, quite often Galileo could see his darling, the eldest daughter Virginia, until her death in 1634. Younger Libya did not visit her father due to illness.

Death

As a result of a short-term imprisonment in 1633, Galileo renounced the idea of ​​heliocentrism and came under indefinite arrest. The scientist was placed under home protection in the city of Archetri with limited communication. Galileo stayed at the Tuscan villa without a break until the last days of his life. The heart of the genius stopped on January 8, 1642. At the time of his death, there were two students next to the scientist - Viviani and Torricelli. During the 30s, it was possible to publish the last works of the thinker - "Dialogues" and "Conversations and Mathematical Proofs Concerning Two New Branches of Science" in Protestant Holland.

Tomb of Galileo Galilei

After his death, the Catholics forbade the burial of Galileo's ashes in the crypt of the Basilica of Santa Croce, where the scientist wanted to rest. Justice was done in 1737. From now on, Galileo's grave is located next to. After another 20 years, the church rehabilitated the idea of ​​heliocentrism. Galileo's acquittal had to wait much longer. The mistake of the Inquisition was recognized only in 1992 by Pope John Paul II.