Galileo

Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernican principle. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy”, the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the Father of Modern Science”. Galileo’s championing of heliocentric was controversial within his lifetime, when most subscribed to either geocentric or the Tectonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentric due to the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The Roman Inquisition investigated the matter in 1615, and they concluded that it could only be supported as a possibility, not as an established fact. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he wrote one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarized the work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.