Galileo Timeline

Galileo Galilei is born in Pisa, Italy. He is the oldest son of Vincenzo Galilei, a musician who made important contributions to the theory and practice of music. In the early 1570s the family moves to Florence where Galileo attends the monastery school in Vallombrosa.

Galileo enters the University of Pisa to study medicine but eventually decides to make mathematics and natural philosophy his profession. He later writes a short treatise on weighing small quantities and begins his study of motion.

A patron helps Galileo secure the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. He writes his treatise On Motion during this time, demonstrating that several of Aristotle’s ideas about how objects move are false.

Galileo teaches at the University of Padua and continues his studies of motion. His experiments result in the law of falling bodies and the discovery that the flight of a projectile, such as a cannonball, is curved. Both ideas contradict Aristotelian physics.

Galileo builds a telescope to observe the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. In 1610 he discovers four moons revolving around the planet Jupiter. In his book The Sidereal Messenger Galileo describes his discoveries supporting the Copernican heliocentric theory, which proposed that Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun. (For centuries astronomy had been based on Ptolemy’s theory that Earth was the center of the universe and motionless.) Cosimo II de Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, appoints Galileo court mathematician and philosopher. 

Roman Catholic Church officials grow increasingly alarmed over Galileo’s support for Copernican ideas. In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo discusses the problem of interpreting biblical passages in light of Copernican theory. The church warns him not to “hold, teach, or defend” this theory “either orally or in writing.”

Galileo publishes The Assayer, a discussion of physical reality—the “book of the universe”—and the scientific method of exploring it. He argues that the universe is written in the language of mathematics and geometry and that without learning this language, the true nature of the universe cannot be understood. 

Pope Urban VIII gives Galileo permission to write about his theories of the universe but warns him to give Copernicus only slight treatment.

Galileo publishes Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican (1632). The work is a debate among three characters, but the conclusions clearly favor Copernicus. The following year Galileo is summoned to Rome to stand trial for heresy. He is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Instead of going to prison he is placed under house arrest in a villa near Florence for the remainder of his life.

Galileo continues his work, writing a new book, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences. It discusses his previous studies regarding the strength of materials and summarizes his mathematical and experimental investigations of motion. In 1638 the work is smuggled out of Italy and published in the Netherlands.  

Galileo dies in his villa, at the age of 77. More than 350 years later the church acknowledges that Galileo had been right about the Copernican theory.