Galileo

Galileo (Galilei), astronomer, mathematician, and physicist was another of those great anti-Aristotelian scientists of the age, such as Johann Kepler (1571-1630) whoalso published laws of planetary motion. These great men came to their great discoveries because of their scientific view of Nature. They were a new breed ofphilosophers, natural philosophers, or scientists as we call them today. They did not dwell long on the useless question: Why do things happen? They asked: "How do thingshappen?
Galileo was an Italian. At the age of 19 he discovered the principle of isochronism that each oscillation of a pendulum takes the same time despite changes inamplitude. Soon thereafter he became known for his ideas on hydrostatic balance; and, further, his treatise on the center of gravity of falling bodies. He foundexperimentally that bodies do not fall with velocities proportional to their weights, a conclusion received with hostility because it contradicted the accepted teaching ofAristotle. Galileo discovered that the path of a projectile is a parabola, and he is credited with anticipating Isaac Newton's laws of motion. In 1609 Galileo constructedthe first astronomical telescope, which he used to discover the four largest satellites of Jupiter and the stellar composition of the Milky Way, and in 1632 hepublished his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, a work that upheld the Copernican system rather than the Ptolematic system and marked a turning point inscientific and philosophical thought. Brought (1633) before the Inquisition in Rome, he was made to renounce all his beliefs and writings supporting the Copernican theory.