Italian Astronomer, Mathematician, and Physicist 1564-1642

Galileo Galilei (commonly known as Galileo) was a founder of modern physics and modern astronomy. He was born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564, and was a professor from 1592 through 1610 at Padua, which was part of the Venetian Republic. While in Pisa, he noticed a chandelier swinging in the cathedral and developed the physical law that shows that pendulums of the same length swing in the same time interval. Using a pendulum for timing, he experimentally worked out how objects accelerate while falling. In these experiments, he rolled objects down an inclined plane; the traditional story that he dropped weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa was a myth.

In 1609 Galileo heard of a device that existed that could magnify distant objects. Using his experimental abilities, he ground lenses and assembled a telescope. He demonstrated its possibilities for aiding commerce by showing...