Galileo+Galilei

**//LIFE OF GALILEO GALILEI//**
Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564. In the early 1570's Galileo began his formal education in a monastery in Florence, Italy.

In 1581 Galileo’s father sent Galileo to become a doctor at the University of Pisa. Galileo spent the next four years studying medicine and the philosophy of Aristotle.

Galileo Galilei soon realised he was not interested in a future of medicine; however he was fascinated in mathematics. Galileo convinced his father to let him leave the university and move back with his family.

During his four years of tutoring mathematics, Galileo began to question Aristotelian philosophy and scientific thought. He gained his first public notice with his new hydrostatic balance, an instrument used to find the specific gravity of an object by weighing it in water.

In 1589, Galileo was chosen to be the professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. His position required him to teach astronomy and Ptolemy’s theory that the sun and all other plants revolve around the earth. During the next 18 years Galileo grew convinced of the theory that all the planets revolve around the sun. In 1609 Galileo built the first telescope. Using this telescope, Galileo now had proof of the theory that all the planets resolve around the sun.

Galileo then discovered that the moon was not smooth but rough and mountainous, much like earth. He then discovered in 1610, four objects circling Jupiter which he soon found out were moons. He named them the “Medicean Planets”

Continuing his studies of space, Galileo studied sunspots, Venus and Saturn. He found that Venus progresses through phases, confirming the theory that the earth revolves around the sun.