Galileo Galilei and His Successors

Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa into a family of minor nobility. His father, Vincenzio, gave lessons in music (and studied its mathematical theory) and helped his wife’s family in their small business. He wished for his son a better than their modest (if not poor) standard of living. However, rather than choosing a career in business as recommended by his father, the 17-year-old Galileo entered the University of Pisa, intending to study medicine. After 4 years he left the university without a degree, but with a basic knowledge of mathematics and Aristotelian physics. Returning home to his parents who now lived in Florence, Galileo began to write mathematical studies and to give private lessons as well as public lectures. He helped his father in musical experiments with strings of different length, thickness, and tension. Interestingly, the founder of experimental physics was occupied with experiments similar to the first known quantitative experiments by the early Pythagoreans, who found that the integer ratios of the strings of the lyre give rise to pleasant harmonies.

Galileo studied texts by Archimedes that were translated into Latin in the sixteenth century. This inspired him to investigate static mechanics topics like the center of gravity of bodies. Thanks to a short paper he wrote on these subjects, he got a temporary position as a professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. After 3 years, at the age of 28, he went to Padua to teach mathematics and astronomy. He lived there for 18 years carrying out the main part of his famous studies of bodies in motion (Fig. 7.1).