Galileo Galilei (Italian Galileo Galilei). Born February 15, 1564 in Pisa - died January 8, 1642 in Archetri. Italian physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher and mathematician who had a significant impact 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 speculative metaphysics 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.

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 Galileo's great-great-grandfather , a famous physician who also bore the name Galileo, was elected head of the republic in 1445.

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 composer-lute player. 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. From an early age, the boy was attracted to art; Throughout his life, he carried a love of music and drawing, which he mastered perfectly. In his mature years, the best artists of Florence - Chigoli, Bronzino, and others - consulted with him on issues of perspective and composition; Chigoli even claimed that he owed his fame to Galileo. According to the writings of Galileo, one can also conclude that he has a remarkable literary talent.

Galileo received his primary education at the nearby Vallombrosa monastery. The boy loved to learn and became one of the best students in the class. He considered the possibility of becoming a priest, but his father was against it.

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 his own opinion on all scientific issues, regardless of the traditional authorities.

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

Soon, the father's financial situation deteriorated, and he was unable to pay further for his son's education. The request to free Galileo from fees (such an exception was made for the most capable students) was rejected. Galileo returned to Florence (1585) without receiving his degree. Fortunately, he managed to draw attention to himself 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, unlike the Pisa professors, was able to correctly assess him. Even then, del Monte said that since time 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 (Venetian Republic), where he taught astronomy, mechanics and mathematics.

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 incessantly 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 the treatise "Mechanics", which aroused some interest and was republished in French translation. In his early works, as well as in correspondence, Galileo gave the first sketch of a new general theory of the fall of bodies and the motion of a pendulum.

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. Learning about the invention of the telescope in Holland, Galileo in 1609 designs the first telescope with his own hand and directs it to 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 4 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 satellites the "Medici Stars" (Latin Stellae Medicae). Now they have a better name "Galilean satellites".

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 in 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.

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. Astrologers and doctors also protested, complaining that the emergence 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 Gamba). 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 to the Inquisition, and moves to Florence. Duke Cosimo II Medici, son of Ferdinand, 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 accumulated after the marriage of his two sisters.

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 relieved of the tedious duty of lecturing.

Galileo continues research and reveals the phases of Venus, spots on the Sun, and then the rotation of the Sun around its axis... Galileo often expressed his achievements (and often his priority) in a cocky polemical style, which made him many new enemies (in particular, among the Jesuits).

The growth of Galileo's influence, the independence of his thinking and a 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 circumspectly. The cardinals created a whole commission to find out whether it is not a sin to look at the sky through a pipe, but they came to the conclusion that this 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 successes 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 Bellarmino, sent on April 12, 1615, to the theologian Paolo Antonio Foscarini, the defender of Copernicanism. The cardinal explains 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.

On March 5, 1616, Rome officially defines heliocentrism as a dangerous heresy.: "To assert 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 assert that the Earth is not in the center of the world, that it does not remain motionless and even possesses daily rotation, there is an opinion just as absurd, false from a philosophical and sinful from a religious point of view. "

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 violating the prohibition, to continue defending the truth. Eventually he 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.

After the fateful decree of 1616, Galileo changed the direction of the struggle for several years - now he focuses his efforts mainly on criticizing Aristotle, whose writings also formed the basis of the medieval worldview. In 1623, Galileo's book "Assaying Master" (Italian Il Saggiatore) was published; it 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) \u200b\u200bin 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, a longtime acquaintance and friend of Galileo, was elected as the new Pope, under the name Urban VIII. In April 1624 Galileo went to Rome, hoping to get the edict of 1616 revoked. He was received with all the 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 the 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 his [world] center, then this is the center of the revolutions of heavenly bodies; and in it, as everyone 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."

In modern terminology, Galileo proclaimed the homogeneity of space (the absence of the center of the world) and the equality of inertial reference systems. An important anti-Aristotelian point should be noted: Galileo's argument 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 work 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 the 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 as a monk. 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 food and flowers to his daughter, in return his daughter prepared jam for him, 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, lived in the same monastery, but at that time she 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.

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 sources, 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 science lovers: 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 the "folk" Italian language.

Galileo hoped that the Pope would treat his trick as condescendingly as he had earlier to the Letters to Ingoli similar in ideas, but he miscalculated. To top it all 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 (see below Galileo's letter to Diodati). Within a few months, the book was banned and withdrawn from sale, and Galileo was summoned to Rome (despite the plague epidemic) to the Inquisition's trial on suspicion of heresy. After unsuccessful attempts to achieve a postponement due to poor health and the ongoing plague epidemic (Urban threatened to deliver him forcibly in shackles) Galileo obeyed, 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.

At the end of the first interrogation, the accused was taken into custody. Galileo spent only 18 days in prison (from April 12 to 30, 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. In view of 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 whether Galileo was tortured while in prison. 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 you do not quite openly admit your intentions when answering, we considered it necessary to resort to a severe test."

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 preserved documents and letters, scientific topics were not discussed during 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 will repent and renounce his "delusions", or his fate will befall him.

"Having familiarized himself with the whole course of the case and after hearing the 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 of heresy ... sentenced to imprisonment at the discretion of the Holy Congregation. He is ordered not to reason more in writing or orally what - or about the motion 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 pronounce 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 the Holy and Divine Scriptures idea that the Sun is the center of the earthly orbits and does not move from east to west, the Earth is mobile and is not the center of the Universe.Likewise, we recognize you as a disobedient to the church authority, which forbade you to expound, defend and pass off as a probable doctrine recognized as false and contrary to Holy Scripture ... That such a grave and harmful sin your disobedience did not remain without any reward and you would not have become even more daring later on, but, on the contrary, would serve as an example and warning for others, we decided to ban the book under the title "Dialogue" by Galileo Galilei, and imprison you yourself at St. trial for an indefinite time. "

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.

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 the 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 printed works were subject to particularly careful censorship. Note that in Protestant Holland, the publication of "Dialogue" continued.

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 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 to imprisonment by the Holy Inquisition at the direction of His Holiness ... this small town one mile from Florence became the 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 the 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 have asked for permission to return to Florence, otherwise they would put me in a real prison of the Holy Inquisition ... This incident and others, about which it would take too long to write, shows that my rage is very powerful persecutors are constantly increasing. And they finally wished to reveal their face: when one of my dear friends in Rome, about two months, in a conversation with the Padre Christopher Greenberg, a Jesuit, a mathematician of this collegium, touched upon my affairs, this Jesuit told my friend literally the following: “If Galileo could keep the favor of the fathers of this collegium, he would live free, enjoying the glory, he would not have any grief and he could write at his own 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 Jesuits ".

At the end of the letter, Galileo ridicules the ignorant, who “declare the mobility of the Earth a heresy” and informs him 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.

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 was negotiating the publication of his work in Holland, and then secretly forwarded the manuscript there. In a confidential letter to a friend, Count de Noel (to whom he dedicated this book), Galileo writes 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 manage 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.

Galileo's 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.

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 motion. The analysis of mechanical movement forms the basis of Galileo's work.

Galileo formulated the correct laws of falling: the speed increases in proportion to the time, and the path - in proportion to the square of the 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. This is the first solved problem of dynamics in the history of science. 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). Based on 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 wording of the law was later given by and; nevertheless, it is generally accepted that the very concept of "inertial motion" was first introduced by Galileo, and the first law of mechanics rightfully 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 named later in his honor.

The above discoveries of Galileo, among other things, allowed him to refute many arguments of 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 point more against than for the rotation of the Earth will be fruitless."

Galileo published a study of pendulum oscillations 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 a pendulum's swing are related as square roots of its length. Galileo's results attracted the attention of Huygens, who invented a clock with a pendulum regulator (1657); 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. Similarly, he explains the (theoretically undamped) swing of the pendulum.

In statics, Galileo introduced the fundamental concept of the moment of force.

In 1609, Galileo independently built his first telescope with a convex lens and a concave eyepiece. The tube gave approximately three times the magnification. Soon he managed to build a telescope with a magnification of 32 times. Note that it was Galileo who introduced the term telescope into 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 the first telescopic observations of celestial bodies on January 7, 1610. These observations showed that the Moon, like the Earth, has a complex topography - covered with mountains and craters. The ash light of the moon, known since ancient times, was explained by Galileo as the result of hitting our natural satellite of sunlight reflected by the Earth. All this refuted the doctrine of Aristotle about the opposition of "earthly" and "heavenly": the Earth became a body of fundamentally 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.

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

Galileo showed that when observed through a telescope, the planets are visible as disks, the apparent sizes of which in different 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 with the naked eye looks like a solid glow, disintegrated into separate stars (which confirmed Democritus's guess), and a huge number of previously unknown stars became visible.

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.

Probability theory includes his research on outcomes when 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 Galileo's paradox: natural numbers as many 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; ended the process of creating set theory.

Galileo created a hydrostatic balance to determine the specific gravity of solids. Galileo described their construction in La bilancetta (1586).

Galileo developed the first thermometer, still without a scale (1592), proportional compassused in drafting (1606), microscope, poor quality (1612); with his help Galileo studied insects.

Galileo's disciples:

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.

Galilei Galileo (15.02.1564 - 08.01.1642) was an Italian physicist, astronomer, mathematician and philosopher who made a great contribution to the development of science. He discovered experimental physics, laid the foundations for the development of classical mechanics, and made major discoveries in astronomy.

Young years

Galileo, a native of the city of Pisa, had a noble birth, but his family was not rich. Galileo was the oldest child of four (a total of six children were born in the family, but two died). Since childhood, the boy was drawn to creativity: like his father, a musician, he was seriously fond of music, drew well and was versed in matters of fine arts. He also had a literary gift, which allowed him to further express his scientific research in works.

He was an outstanding student at the school at the monastery. I wanted to become a clergyman, but changed my mind because of the rejection of this idea by my father, who insisted on getting his son a medical education. So at the age of 17, Galileo went to the University of Pisa, where, in addition to medicine, he studied geometry, which greatly fascinated him.

Already at this time, the young man was characterized by the desire to defend his own position, not being afraid of established authoritative opinions. I constantly argued with teachers about science. He studied at the university for three years. It is assumed that at that time Galileo learned the teachings of Copernicus. He was forced to drop out when his father could no longer pay for it.

Due to the fact that the young man managed to make several inventions, he was noticed. He was especially admired by the Marquis del Monte, who was very fond of science and had good capital. So Galileo found a patron who also introduced him to the Duke of Medici and got him a professor at the same university. This time, Galileo focused on mathematics and mechanics. In 1590 he published his work - the treatise "On Movement".

Professor in Venice

From 1592 to 1610, Galileo taught at the University of Padua, became the head of the department of mathematics, was famous in scientific circles. Galileo's most active work fell on this time. He was very popular with students who dreamed of getting into his classes. Eminent scientists corresponded with him, and the authorities constantly set new technical problems for Galileo. At the same time the treatise "Mechanics" was published.

When a new star was discovered in 1604, his scientific research fell on astronomy. In 1609, he assembles the first telescope, with the help of which he seriously advanced the development of astronomical science. Galileo described the surface of the moon, the Milky Way, discovered the moons of Jupiter. His book The Star Messenger, published in 1610, was a huge success and made the telescope a popular purchase in Europe. But along with recognition and veneration, accusations of the illusoryness of his discoveries, as well as the desire to harm the medical and astrological sciences, fall on the scientist.

Soon Professor Galileo enters into an unofficial marriage with Marina Gamba, who gave birth to three children. Responding to the offer of a high position in Florence from the Duke of the Medici, he moved and became an adviser to the court. This decision allowed Galileo to pay off large debts, but partly played a disastrous role in his fate.

Life in Florence

At the new location, the scientist continued his astronomical research. He was characterized by the presentation of his discoveries in a cocky style, which greatly annoyed other leaders, as well as the Jesuits. This led to the formation of an anti-Galilean society. The main complaint from the church was the heliocentric system, contrary to religious texts.

In 1611, the scientist went to Rome to meet with the head of the Catholic Church, where he was received quite warmly. There he introduced the telescope to the cardinals and tried, with caution, to give some explanations. Later, encouraged by a successful visit, he published his letter to the abbot stating that Scripture cannot have authority in matters of science, which attracted the attention of the Inquisition.

Galileo demonstrates the laws of gravity (fresco by D. Bezzoli, 1841)

His 1613 book, Letters on Sunspots, openly supported the teachings of N. Copernicus. In 1615, the first case was opened against Galileo by the Inquisition. And after he called on the Pope to express his final point of view on Copernicanism, the situation only got worse. In 1616, the church declares heliocentrism heresy and prohibits the book of Galileo. Galileo's attempts to rectify the situation did not lead to anything, but they promised not to persecute him if he stopped supporting the teachings of Copernicus. But for a convinced scientist, this was impossible.

Nevertheless, for a while, he decided to turn his energy in a different direction, taking up criticism of the teachings of Aristotle. The result was his book "Assaying Master", written in 1623. At the same time, Galileo Barberini's longtime friend was elected Pope. In the hope of lifting the ban of the church, the scientist went to Rome, where he was well received, but did not achieve what he wanted. Galileo further decided in his writings to continue to defend the truth, considering several scientific points of view from a position of neutrality. His "Dialogue on Two Systems of the World" lays the foundations for a new mechanics.

Galileo's conflict with the church

Having submitted his Dialogue to the Catholic censor in 1630, Galileo waits for a year, after which he resorts to a trick: he writes a preface about the rejection of Copernicanism as a teaching. As a result, permission was obtained. Published in 1632, the book did not contain the specific conclusions of the author, although it clearly made sense in the argumentation of the Copernican system. The work was written in accessible Italian, and the author also independently sent copies to the highest ministers of the church.

A few months later, the book was banned, and Galileo was called to trial. He was arrested and imprisoned for 18 days. Thanks to the efforts of his apprentice, the duke, leniency was shown to the scientist, although he was supposedly still tortured. The investigation lasted two months, after which Galileo was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, he also had to renounce his own "delusions". He actually didn’t utter the catchphrase “And yet it turns,” which is attributed to Galileo. This legend was invented by the Italian literary figure D. Baretti.

Galileo before the Court (K. Bunty, 1857)

Old age

The scientist did not stay in prison for a long time, he was allowed to live on the Medici estate, and after five months - to return home, where they continued to follow him. Galileo settled in Archetri near the monastery where his daughters served, and spent the last years under house arrest. He was subjected to a large number of prohibitions that made it difficult for him to treat and communicate with friends. Later they were allowed to visit the scientist one at a time.

Despite the difficulties, Galileo continued to work in unbanned scientific directions. He published a book on mechanics, planned to publish a book anonymously in defense of his views, but did not have time. After the death of his beloved daughter, he became blind, but continued to work, wrote a work on kinematics, published in Holland and became the basis for the research of Huygens and Newton.

Galileo died and was buried in Archetri, the church forbade burial in the family crypt and the erection of monuments to the scientist. His grandson, the last member of the family, became a monk and destroyed valuable manuscripts. In 1737, the remains of the scientist were transferred to the family tomb. The Catholic Church rehabilitated Galileo only in the late 70s of the last century; in 1992, the mistake of the Inquisition was officially recognized.

Galilei Galileo
Born: February 15, 1564.
Died: January 8, 1642 (77 years old).

Biography

Galileo Galilei (Italian Galileo Galilei; February 15, 1564, Pisa - January 8, 1642, Archetri) - Italian physicist, mechanic, astronomer, philosopher and 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 Galileo's great-great-grandfather , a famous physician who also bore the name Galileo, was elected head of the republic in 1445.

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, Libya and the youngest son of Michelangelo, who later also gained fame 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. From an early age, the boy was attracted to art; Throughout his life, he carried a love of music and drawing, which he mastered perfectly. In his mature years, the best artists of Florence - Chigoli, Bronzino, and others - consulted with him on issues of perspective and composition; Chigoli even claimed that he owed his fame to Galileo. According to the writings of Galileo, one can also conclude that he has a remarkable literary talent.

Galileo received his primary education at the nearby Vallombrosa monastery. The boy loved to learn and became one of the best students in the class. He considered the possibility of becoming a priest, but his father was against it.

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 his own opinion on all scientific issues, regardless of the 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 just carried out.

Soon, the father's financial situation deteriorated, and he was unable to pay further for his son's education. The request to free Galileo from fees (such an exception was made for the most capable students) was refused. Galileo returned to Florence (1585) without receiving his 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, unlike 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 place at the prestigious and wealthy University of Padua (Venetian Republic), 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 well known 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 provide him with the chair of mathematics for four years with 180 florins of salary per year.

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 incessantly 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 the treatise "Mechanics", which aroused some interest and was republished in French translation. In his early works, as well as in correspondence, Galileo gave the first sketch of a new general theory of the fall of bodies and the motion of a pendulum.

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 4 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 satellites the "Medici Stars" (Latin Stellae Medicae). They are now more appropriately called "Galilean satellites."

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 in 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. 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. Astrologers and doctors also protested, complaining that the emergence 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 Gamba). 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 to the Inquisition, and moves to Florence. Duke Cosimo II Medici, son of Ferdinand, 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 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 relieved of the tedious duty of lecturing.

Galileo continues his scientific research and discovers the phases of Venus, spots on the Sun, and then the rotation of the Sun around its axis. Galileo often expressed 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 growth of Galileo's influence, the independence of his thinking and a 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 circumspectly. The cardinals created a whole commission to find out whether it is not a sin to look at the sky through a pipe, but they came to the conclusion that this 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 successes 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 Bellarmino, sent on April 12, 1615 to the theologian Paolo Antonio Foscarini, the defender of Copernicanism. Cardinal explains that the church does not object to the interpretation of Copernicanism as a convenient mathematical device, but accepting it as a 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 wish 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 stands in the third heaven and revolves around the Sun with great speed, is very dangerous to assert not only because it means to excite all philosophers and scholastic theologians; it would be to harm holy faith by making the statements of Holy Scripture false. Secondly, as you know, the [Council of Trent] forbade the interpretation of Holy Scripture contrary to the common 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 you need to understand literally that the Sun is in heaven and rotates 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 Scriptures to be given a meaning opposite to everything that was written by the Holy Fathers and all Greek and Latin commentators?

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.
Galileo scientific entertainment and educational TV program, 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.

Galileo in literature and art

Bertolt Brecht. Galileo's life. Play. - In the book: Bertolt Brecht. Theater. Plays. Articles. Statements. In five volumes. - M .: Art, 1963 .-- T. 2.
Liliana Cavani (director). Galileo (motion picture) (English) (1968). Retrieved March 2, 2009. Archived from the original on August 13, 2011.
Joseph Losey (director). Galileo (film, adaptation of Brecht's play) (English) (1975). Retrieved March 2, 2009. Archived from the original on August 13, 2011.
Philip Glass (composer), opera Galileo.
Haggard (rock band) - The Observer (built on several facts from Galileo's biography)
Enigma released the track "Eppur si muove" on the album A Posteriori.

Great Soviet Encyclopedia: Galilei Galileo (15.2.1564, Pisa, - 8.1.1642, Arcetri, near Florence), Italian physicist, mechanic and astronomer, one of the founders of natural science, poet, philologist and critic.
G. belonged to a noble but impoverished Florentine family. His father, Vincenzo, a famous musician, had a great influence on the development and formation of G.'s abilities. Until the age of 11, G. lived in Pisa, attended school there, then the family moved to Florence. G. received further education at the Vallombrosa monastery, where he was accepted as a novice into the monastic order. Here I got acquainted with the works of Latin and Greek writers. Under the pretext of a serious eye disease, the father took his son from the monastery. At the insistence of his father, in 1581 he entered the University of Pisa, where he studied medicine. Here he first became acquainted with the physics of Aristotle, which from the very beginning seemed to him unconvincing. G. turned to reading ancient mathematicians - Euclid and Archimedes. Archimedes became his real teacher. Fascinated by geometry and mechanics, G. left medicine and returned to Florence, where he spent 4 years studying mathematics. The result of this period of G.'s life was a small essay "Small scales" (1586, ed. 1655), which described hydrostatic scales built by G. to quickly determine the composition of metal alloys, and a geometric study of the centers of gravity of body figures. These works brought G. the first fame among Italian mathematicians. In 1589 he received the chair of mathematics in Pisa, continuing his scientific work. His "Dialogue on Movement", written in Pisa and directed against Aristotle, is preserved in the manuscripts. Some of the conclusions and argumentation in this work are erroneous, and G. later rejected them. But already here, without naming the name of Copernicus, G. gives arguments that refute Aristotle's objections to the daily rotation of the Earth.
In 1592, Mr .. took the chair of mathematics in Padua. The Padua period of G.'s life (1592-1610) was the time of the highest flowering of his activity. During these years, his static research on machines arose, where he proceeds from the general principle of equilibrium, which coincides with the principle of possible displacements (see the principle of possible displacements), his main dynamic works on the laws of free fall of bodies, on falling on an inclined plane, on motion of a body thrown at an angle to the horizon, on the isochronism of the oscillations of a pendulum. This period also includes research on the strength of materials, on the mechanics of animal bodies; finally, in Padua, G. became a fully convinced follower of Copernicus. However, G.'s scientific work remained hidden from everyone, except for friends. G.'s lectures were read according to the traditional program, they set out the teachings of Ptolemy. In Padua, G. published only a description of the proportional compass, which allows you to quickly make various calculations and constructions.
In 1609, on the basis of the information that came down to him about the telescope invented in Holland, G. builds his first telescope, which gives approximately 3-fold magnification. The work of the telescope was demonstrated from the tower of St. Mark in Venice and made a tremendous impression. Soon G. built a telescope with a magnification of 32 times. The observations made with its help destroyed Aristotle's "ideal spheres" and the dogma of the perfection of celestial bodies: the surface of the Moon was covered with mountains and pitted with craters, the stars lost their apparent size and for the first time their colossal remoteness was comprehended. Jupiter found 4 satellites, a huge number of new stars became visible in the sky. The Milky Way has disintegrated into separate stars. G. described his observations in the composition "Star Messenger" (1610-11), which made a stunning impression. At the same time, a fierce controversy began. G. was accused of the fact that everything he saw was an optical illusion, and was argued simply by the fact that his observations contradicted Aristotle, and, therefore, were erroneous.
Astronomical discoveries served as a turning point in the life of G.: he freed himself from teaching and, at the invitation of Duke Cosimo II of Medici, moved to Florence. Here he becomes a court "philosopher" and "first mathematician" of the university, without the obligation to lecture.
Continuing telescopic observations, G. discovered the phases of Venus, sunspots and the rotation of the Sun, studied the motion of Jupiter's satellites, and observed Saturn. In 1611, G. traveled to Rome, where he was enthusiastically received at the papal court and where he struck up a friendship with Prince Cesi, the founder of the Accademia dei Lincei ("Academy of Lynch-Eyes"), of which he became a member. At the insistence of the duke, G. published his first anti-Aristotelian work - "Discourse on the bodies that are in water and those that move in it" (1612), where he applied the principle of equal moments to the derivation of equilibrium conditions in liquid bodies.
However, in 1613 G.'s letter to the Abbot Castelli became known, in which he defended the views of Copernicus. The letter served as a pretext for a direct denunciation of G. to the Inquisition. In 1616, the congregation of the Jesuits declared Copernicus's teachings heretical, and Copernicus's book was included in the list of prohibited ones. G.'s name was not named in the resolution, but he was privately ordered to refuse to defend this doctrine. G. formally obeyed the decree. For several years he was forced to remain silent about the Copernican system or to speak about it in hints. G.'s only great work during this period was The Assayer (1623), a polemical treatise on the three comets that appeared in 1618. With regard to literary form, wit and sophistication of style, this is one of the most remarkable works of G.
In 1623, G.'s friend Cardinal Maffeo Barberini ascended the papal throne under the name Urban VIII. For G., this event seemed tantamount to liberation from the bonds of an interdict (decree). In 1630 he arrived in Rome with a finished manuscript of the Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow (the first title of the Dialogue on the Two Major Systems of the World), in which the systems of Copernicus and Ptolemy are presented in the conversations of three interlocutors: Sagredo, Salviati and Simplicio.
Pope Urban VIII agreed to the publication of a book in which the teachings of Copernicus would be presented as one of the possible hypotheses. After lengthy censorship ordeals, G. received the long-awaited permission to publish the "Dialogue" with some changes; the book appeared in Florence in Italian in January 1632. A few months after the publication of the book, G. received an order from Rome to stop further sale of the edition. At the request of the Inquisition, G. was forced to come to Rome in February 1633. A trial was instituted against G. At four interrogations - from April 12 to June 21, 1633 - G. renounced the teachings of Copernicus and on June 22 brought a public repentance on his knees in the church of Maria Sopra Minerva. "Dialogue" was banned, and G. was officially considered a "prisoner of the Inquisition" for 9 years. He first lived in Rome, in the ducal palace, then in his villa Arcetri, near Florence. He was forbidden to talk with anyone about the movement of the Earth and to publish works. Despite the papal interdict, a Latin translation of the Dialogue appeared in Protestant countries, and G.'s discourse on the relationship between the Bible and natural science was published in Holland. Finally, in 1638 in Holland, published one of the most important works of G., summarizing his physical research and containing the substantiation of the dynamics - "Conversations and mathematical proofs concerning two new branches of science ...".
In 1637 he became blind. He died on January 8, 1642. In 1737, Galileo's last will was fulfilled - his ashes were transferred to Florence to the Church of Santa Croce, where he was buried next to Michelangelo.
G.'s influence on the development of mechanics, optics, and astronomy in the 17th century. invaluable. His scientific activity, great importance of discovery, scientific courage were decisive for the victory of the heliocentric system of the world. G.'s work on the creation of the basic principles of mechanics was especially significant. If the basic laws of motion were not expressed by G. with the same clarity with which I. Newton did it, then in essence the law of inertia and the law of addition of motions were fully realized by him and applied to solving practical problems. The history of statics begins with Archimedes; The history of dynamics was opened by G. He was the first to put forward the idea of \u200b\u200bthe relativity of motion (Galileo's principle of relativity), and solved a number of basic mechanical problems. This includes, first of all, the study of the laws of free fall of bodies and their fall on an inclined plane; laws of motion of a body thrown at an angle to the horizon; establishing the conservation of mechanical energy during the oscillation of the pendulum. G. struck a blow to Aristotelian dogmatic ideas about absolutely light bodies (fire, air); in a number of ingenious experiments, he showed that air is a heavy body and even determined its specific gravity in relation to water.
The basis of G.'s worldview is the recognition of the objective existence of the world, that is, its existence outside and independently of human consciousness. The world is infinite, he believed, matter is eternal. In all processes occurring in nature, nothing is destroyed or generated - there is only a change in the mutual arrangement of bodies or their parts. Matter consists of absolutely indivisible atoms, its motion is the only universal mechanical movement. Celestial bodies are like the Earth and obey the uniform laws of mechanics. Everything in nature is subject to strict mechanical causality. G. saw the true goal of science in finding the causes of phenomena. According to G., knowledge of the inner necessity of phenomena is the highest level of knowledge. He considered observation to be the starting point for understanding nature, and experience was the basis of science. Rejecting the attempts of the scholastics to obtain the truth from comparing the texts of recognized authorities and by means of abstract speculation, G. argued that the task of a scientist is "... is to study the great book of nature, which is the real subject of philosophy" ("Dialogue on the two main systems of the world, ptolemy and Copernicus ", M.-L., 1948, p. 21). Those who blindly adhere to the opinion of authorities, not wishing to independently study the phenomena of nature, G. called "servile minds", considered them unworthy of the title of philosopher and branded as "doctors of cramming." However, limited by the conditions of his time, G. was not consistent; he shared the theory of dual truth and admitted a divine first impulse.
Giftedness G. was not limited to the field of science: he was a musician, artist, art lover and a brilliant writer. His scientific treatises, most of which were written in the popular Italian language, although G. was fluent in Latin, can also be attributed to works of art for the simplicity and clarity of presentation and brilliance of the literary style. G. translated from Greek into Latin, studied the ancient classics and poets of the Renaissance (the works "Notes on Ariosto", "Critique of Tasso"), spoke at the Florentine Academy on the study of Dante, wrote a burlesque poem "Satire on the toga wearers." G. - co-author of the canzone of A. Salvadori "On the Medici Stars" - the moons of Jupiter, discovered by G. in 1610.

The Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei is known as one of the greatest scientific minds. During his life, however, he was persecuted by the Catholic Church for his belief that the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the universe. Learn more about the iconic scientist, including whether he invented the telescope, how he received his punishment after the Roman Inquisition trial, and how his middle finger ended up in the museum.

He was dropped out of college

Galileo, whose father was a lute player and music theorist, was born in Pisa, Italy. Despite the fact that his father was from a noble family, he was not rich. At the age of ten, Galileo began his studies at a monastery near Florence and was about to become a monk. However, his father was against his son leading a religious life, so he took Galileo out of the monastery. At the age of 16, Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine at the insistence of his father. Instead, however, he became interested in mathematics and focused on it. Galileo left the university in 1585 without receiving a diploma. He continued his mathematical studies on his own and earned money by giving private lessons, and then returned in 1589 to the University of Pisa to teach mathematics there.

He didn't invent the telescope

Galileo did not invent the telescope - a discovery attributed to Dutch lens manufacturer Hans Lipperschey. However, he was the first person to systematically use optical instruments to study the sky. The patent application for the Lipperschey telescope from 1608 is the earliest, but the Dutch government decided that the telescope was too easy to copy, especially since another scientist had already demonstrated a similar device a year earlier, so the patent was refused. In 1609, Galileo learned about the device and developed his own version, significantly improving the design. In the fall of that same year, he aimed a telescope at the moon and found that it was covered with craters and mountains - thereby debunking the general belief that the surface of the moon is smooth.

His daughters were nuns

Galileo had three children with a woman named Marina Gamba, whom he never married. In 1613, he sent his two daughters, Virginia, born in 1600, and Livia, born a year later, to a monastery near Florence, where they remained for the rest of their lives, despite their father's troubles with the Catholic Church. Galileo maintained a close bond with his eldest daughter, known as Sister Maria Celeste. In the monastery she sewed and baked for him when she was freed from her tasks. He, in turn, organized the supply of food and other necessary things to the impoverished monastery. Galileo's son Vincenzo, born in 1606, studied medicine at the University of Pisa, married and lived in Florence.

He was sentenced to life in prison

The heliocentric theory of how the universe functions has challenged the widespread belief that the Earth is the center Solar system... In 1616, the Catholic Church declared the theory heretical because it was viewed as contradicting certain lines of the Bible. Galileo obtained permission from the Catholic Church to study Copernicus' ideas if he did not promote or defend them. In 1632, he published his famous book, which presented the discussion between Ptolemy and Copernicus. The book was seen as supporting the ideas of Copernicus, with the result that a year later, Galileo was brought before the court of the Roman Inquisition. He was found guilty of heresy, forced to publicly repent and sentenced to life in prison.

He spent his final years under house arrest

Although Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment, his sentence was soon changed to house arrest. He spent his last years in a villa in his hometown of Arcetri, near Florence. He could not meet friends and publish books, but nevertheless he was visited by famous people from all over Europe, such as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the poet John Milton. In addition, he managed to transfer the manuscript of a new work, which was published in 1638 - at the same time Galileo finally became blind. He died on January 8, 1642 at the age of 77.

His middle finger is in the museum

After his death, Galileo was buried in the aisle of the Church of Santa Croce in Florence. Almost a century later, in 1737, when the scientist's remains were transported to an honorable burial site in the Basilica of Santa Croce, three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed from the body. Two fingers and a tooth of Galileo were kept by one of his admirers - parts of the scientist's body were passed down from generation to generation, in the early 19th century it seemed that they were lost forever, until they showed up at an auction in 2009, where they were bought by one of the collectors. Meanwhile, the third finger, which is the middle finger of the right hand, has been part of the exposition of many Italian museums. The stolen vertebra ended up at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught from 1592 to 1610.

NASA named a spaceship after him

In 1989, NASA and a team from Germany launched a spacecraft dubbed Galileo. Arriving on Jupiter in 1995, the spacecraft became the first to study the planet and its satellites for an extended period of time.

The Vatican did not admit that Galileo was right until 1992

In 1979, Pope John Paul II initiated an investigation into the condemnation of Galileo by the Catholic Church. Thirteen years later and 359 years after the Inquisition's trial, the Pope closed the investigation and issued an official apology, in which he acknowledged the errors committed by the judges during the trial.