Page from an Edition of La Bilancetta
Galileo Galilei was born on February 15, 1564 in Pisa, Tuscany. He was the oldest son to a well-known musician, Vincenzo Galilei, who made many important contributions about the theory and practice of music.
In the 1570’s, the Galilei family moved to Florence, and during Galileo’s middle teens, he attended a monastery school at Vallombrosa, which was near Florence. In 1981, he followed his father’s wishes and went to the University of Pisa to pursue medicine. However, his passion for mathematics made him want to make mathematical subjects and philosophy his profession rather than medicine. From then on, he prepared himself to teach Aristotelian philosophy and mathematics. In 1585, Galileo left university without a degree and began to give private lessons in mathematical subjects in Florence and Siena. During this time, he created a new form of hydrostatic balance for weighing small quantities. He also wrote a short treatise concerning this discovery. After this, he continued further studies on motion for the next twenty years.
During this time, Galileo applied for the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna in 1588, but was unsuccessful. However, his fame and reputation was increasing and was invited to give lectures at different academies. Galileo also discovered new theorems on centres of gravity which just increased his reputation more. Due to the very good reputation, he earned
Early Life & Career
the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1989. During this period, he demonstrated how dropping different weights at the same height on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, that the speed of fall is not proportional to its weight. This was the beginning to the many opinions Galileo had and it was soon clear that he was abandoning Aristotelian notions and was taking an Archimedean approach. His views made him very unpopular and ultimately did not have him as the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa due to his contract not being renewed. Therefore from 1592-1610, he was the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua.
After his father died in 1591, he was struggling financially due to being the head of the family. Although his university salary was high, it did not cover his expenses which led him to do private tutoring. He also sold many of his devices such as his proportional compass, sector, etc.
Galileo never married but had an arrangement with a Venetian woman, Marina Gamba, and had two daughters and a son together.
As the years went by, he continued his research and discovered many things that ultimately contradicted Aristotelian physics such as that the distance fallen by a body is proportional to the square of the elapsed time (the law of falling bodies) or that the trajectory of a projectile is a parabola. These contradictions led him to many problems and situations but after many years, his work became appreciated and ultimately was the reason for many of the crucial scientific breakthroughs.
University of Pisa