Galileo, though not the first person to use a telescope to observe the sky, did more than anyone to popularize the device and can be fairly called the father of modern astronomy.
A devout Catholic, his writings on the Copernican (incorporating a heliocentric, or sun-centered solar system) model of the universe disturbed the church.
he was forced to recant and put under life-long house arrest.
incorporating an Earth-centered theory of the universe. Recent scholarship has highlighted the fact that many of Galileo's problems with the Inquisition stemmed more from his lack of judgment than from any great desire by the Catholic Church to suppress his ideas.
Nevertheless, Galileo remains a classic case of a scholar forced to recant some of his best work because it offended powerful forces in society.
He discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter, and he was the first westerner to observe sunspots (there is an indication that chinese astronomers had already observed them).
His experimental work in dynamics paved the way for Isaac Newton's laws of motion, and he is often credited with being one of the first scientists to fully exploit the experimental method and to insist on a mathematical description of the laws of nature. His study of balls rolling down inclined planes convinced him that falling objects are accelerated independent of their mass, and that objects retain their velocity unless a force acts on them.
Many of Galileo's theories exist today only in his notes and drawings. He created sketches of imaginary devices such as a candle and mirror combination to reflect light through an entire home, an automatic tomato picker, a pocket comb that doubled as an eating utensil, and what appeared to be a crude form of ballpoint pen.
Bertolt Brecht's drama Galileo is not primarily about Galileo, but about the duties of scientists and the nature of totalitarian thought.
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