Gerry Coachman, age 11, of Rochester, N. Y., for his question:
Who was Galileo?
Satellites and space craft, lunar landings and trips to Mars are events of the Space Age. These events can happen because our experts know the working laws of the universe. It took mankind thousands of years to gather this knowledge, scrap by patient scrap. Galileo was one of the great minds that added more than a scrap to our knowledge of the universe.
He was born Galileo Galilei, in February, 1561 just over 400 years ago. His father was a merchant in the Italian town of Pisa. The boy Galileo was brimful of interests eager to test his skills and solve puzzling problems. Later, he became a medical student, but these studies were dropped for lack of money~ this did not stop his brilliant curiosity.
For 1400 years, most scholars had accepted the ideas of Aristotle and Ptolemy without question. Galileo challenged these ideas and proved many of them wrong. He used the famous Leaning Tower to show that heavy and light objects fall at the same rate. Aristotle had said otherwise.
Galileo spent most of his adult years as a university math professor. His law of falling bodies and other contributions to physics attracted students from across Europe. But his challenging ideas upset many scholars of his day the fiery Galileo enjoyed upsetting them.
In his long quest for truth, Galileo made many contributions to science But one item on this long list is outstanding. He paved the way for mankind to accept the truth about the Solar System. About 150 A.D., Ptolemy had said that the sun and other Planets orbit the earth. Galileo shattered this comfortable notion forever.
He began this phase of his work at 46. The telescope was new Galileo used his hands and his skills to improve upon it and became the first to turn the seeing eye of a telescope upon the heavens. He saw the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, sunspots and faraway stars in the Milky flay. He recorded his observations and drew brilliant conclusions from them. A few years before, Copernicus had suggested that all the planets, including the earth, might just might be orbiting the sun. Galileo stated that his new facts proved Copernicus to be right.
He spoke out boldly against scholars who rejected his findings, and the fiery genius made many powerful enemies. But his beliefs were already published for future scholars to judge. When threatened with torture, the great man weakened and denied his beliefs. It did not matter. The future judged him right, and mankind accepted his picture of the Solar System.
The groundwork for our conquest of space was done between the 1500s and the 1700s. The torch of knowledge, growing brighter all the time, was handed from Copernicus of Poland to Tycho Brahe of Denmark to Galileo of Italy and Kepler of Germany. Newton was born the year that Galileo died, and this torch was lifted in England. Later in England, James Brad1ey provided positive proof that Galileo was right. Between them, these great men paved the way for our working knowledge of the universe. They were the Founding Fathers of the Space Age.