Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564 to Vincenzio Galilei and was the first child in his family. His family was part of the Italian nobility, though they weren¹t rich. His father was a merchant and musician, as well as a champion of advanced musical theories of the day. His family moved from Pisa to Florence, Italy in 1574. He started school that year at the local monastery of Vallombrosa. Only seven years later, in 1581, Galileo moved back to Pisa to start studies at the University of Pisa. His original field of study was in medicine. In 1583, while home in Florence on vacation, Galileo began to study mathematics and physical sciences. He discovered the law of Pendulum by watching a chandelier swing in the cathedral in Pisa. He timed it with his pulse and found that, whether it swung in a wide or a narrow arc, it always took the same number of pulses. From this, society gained it¹s first constant method of keeping time.

Galileo discontinued his studies of medicine at the University of Pisa and shifted solely to mathematics and science, but in Pisa at the time there was only one

On January 11, Galileo again saw only two stars, both on the east side of the planet. But the next night, a new smaller star came out from behind Jupiter where two were on the eastern and one on the western sides of the planet. Then on January 13, the fourth star, missing since January 8, reappeared so that one star was on the eastern and three on the western sides of Jupiter. Two nights later, all four stars were on the western side of the planet. Galileo realized now that the stars were actually planets that revolved around Jupiter. For the first time in history man had seen moons of a planet other than earth. These observation continued through February, and on March 12, 1610, all these observations were printed in Venice under the title of Sidereus nuncius (The Starry Messenger), another of Galileo's books which took the world by surprise. The view of the heavens changed drastically, as did Galileo¹s life. In the later part of that year, Galileo took his wife, his young son, and his two teenaged daughters to the convent of S. Matteo in Padua. Galileo then moved to Florence and a year after his move, his next book was published, Discourse on Bodies in Water, where he reported his findings of the phases of Venus. These phases were important to proving the truth of the Copernician theory and the heat of many disputes. In 1613, Galileo published his findings of sunspots. which sparked a debate with German Jesuit Christopher Scheiner of the University of Ingolstadt, whose observations of sunspots were published in 1612.

before, on account of the weakness of my previous attempts) that beside the planet there were three starlets, small indeed, but very bright...² was recorded on one particular night when he discovered three of the moons of Jupiter. Galileo was also a pioneer of his time not only in science but also in scientific notation as he documented his observations in Italian, rather than in Latin. This provided for a much better translation of his work and findings. Galileo thought he was observing simple, fixed stars, but their position created curiosity for they lay in a straight line on Jupiter, two to the east, and one to the west. The next night, ³led by what, I do not know,² Galileo looked at the same stars again. To his amazement, they had shifted position to a straight line to the west side of Jupiter. He feared that astronomers had miscalculated the movement of the planet. Galileo could hardly wait for the next night, but was met with clouds in every direction. On January 10, Galileo could find only two of the stars to the east side of Jupiter. The third he assumed was behind Jupiter. Galileo realized that the planet¹s movement could not be so erratic, and devised a theory that, contrary to everything he knew, the stars themselves must be moving.

While in Florence , Galileo was successful in furthering his knowledge of mathematics and physics. He proceeded to create two theories that were circulated in writing only and made his name well respected. The first was La bilancetta (The Little Balance), which explained the principles and ideas behind b

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