Galileo biography kids
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Galileo Galilei
Scientist Galileo Galilei was born in 1564 and became famous for his work on mathematics and astronomy. He developed the telescope to enable close observation of the night sky and was famously imprisoned for his (correct) theory that the sun was at the centre of the universe.
Galilei was also interested in mechanics and motion and carried out many successful experiments to investigate his ideas.
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Top 10 facts
- Galileo originally began studying medicine, but switched to mathematics.
- Galileo’s dad, Vincenzo, was a famous musician and composer.
- Galileo played the lute to a very high standard – his dad taught him
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Galileo Galilei facts for kids
Galileo Galilei ( 15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italianphysicist, astronomer, and instrument maker. Galileo was originally going to be a doctor but became a tutor instead.He was a professor of mathematics and natural science in Padua and Pisa. People most remembered him today for his conflict with the Catholic Church of his day, which led to his trial for heresy by the Inquisition.
Name
Galileo was named after an ancestor, Galileo Bonaiuti, a physician, university teacher and politician who lived in Florence from 1370 to 1450. At that time in the late 14th century, the family's surname shifted from Bonaiuti (or Buonaiuti) to Galilei. Galileo Bonaiuti was buried in the same church, the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, where about 200 years later his more famous descendant Galileo Galilei was also buried. When Galileo Galilei was eight, his family moved to Florence, but he was left with Jacopo Borghini for two years. He then was educ
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Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy, on the 15th of February 1564, he died on the 8th of January 1642.
Galileo was a ground breaking astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and uppfinnare. Among his inventions were telescopes, a compass and a thermometer.
Galileo enrolled to do a medical degree at the University of Pisa but never finished, instead choosing to study mathematics.
Galileo built on the work of others to create a telescope with around 3x magnification, he later improved on this to man telescopes with around 30x magnification.
With these telescopes, Galileo was able to observe the skies in ways previously not achieved. In 1610 he made observations of 4 objects surrounding Jupiter that behaved unlike stars, these turned out to be Jupiters fyra largest satellite moons: Io, Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. They were later renamed the Galilean satellites in honor of Galileo himself.
The discovery of these moons was not supported by the scientific p