Ian Stephenson

Dr. Schilling

Chemistry 1010

6 December 2019

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was an Italian man born in 1564 in Pisa, Italy. He lived to quite a ripe old

age for his time, not passing away until 1642, making him 78 when he died. According to

History.com, he studied medicine for a time at the University of Pisa but dropped out after

becoming enthralled with math. Despite this seeming setback, two years later he began his

scientific career with a description of pendulum motion. This was just the first of many scientific

discoveries that he would make during his life.

Galileo was a veritable renaissance man- and not just because he was born during the

renaissance. He dabbled in many fields, from philosophy to mathematics. While he did work in

these fields and other types of sciences, his most prominent work was in astronomy. Galileo did

not invent the telescope, as many people believe, but he did vastly improve it. He used this

improved telescope to discover several celestial bodies, including but not limited to a handful of

Jupiter’s moons. This is perhaps his most popular astronomical discovery. The moons that he

discovered were Europe, Ganymede, Callisto, and Io. These are the planet’s four largest moons,

and were named “The Galilean Moons” after the astronomer who first saw them.

But his discovery of Jupiter’s moons is only one example of his scientific abilities.

According to the Galileo Project, he spent a stint of time interested in nautical technology while
he was a professor at the University of Padua. After being consulted about the placement of oars

in galleys, he proposed a concept that would form the foundation of what we now know as

pumps. While he did not invent the modern pump by any means, he did have an early entry into

its history- and it is nowhere near related to astronomy. This is only one of several examples of

discoveries that Galileo made that lie outside of the bounds of astronomy.

What makes Galileo a great scientist was his flexibility. Even the small list of examples

supplied here, it is plain to see that he did not restrict himself by any stretch of the imagination.

He worked on what interested him, and that changed frequently. Were it not for his eclectic style

of study and publishing, he would not be as well known as he is today. Who knows, maybe he

would just be the guy who saw Jupiter’s moons.

 Works Cited:

History.com Editors. “Galileo Galilei.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 23 July 2010,

https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/galileo-galilei#:~:targetText=Galileo Galilei was born

in,was a college dropout!).

The Galileo Project, http://galileo.rice.edu/index.html.