He was a very different man to Copernicus. For one thing , he was not afraid of the controversy that he knew his new idea would produce. He was not at ignorant of the true meaning of what he was saying. He intended to replace the authority of the church with another authority, because he believed the new authority - that of science. He did not fudge (avoid giving clear answer) as Copernicus had done. he really wanted to bring about a revolutionary change in the way man thought about things.
Yes he was Galileo Galilee, an Italian astronomer, physicist and mathematician; and the advocate of the Copernican theory that the Earth rotates around the sun. He was one of the earliest representatives of the modern scientific world view where the Aristotelian philosophy was rejected; physics was to be gained by observation and experiment.
Galileo was born in Pisa (Italy) in 1564. He was a Roman catholic and he lived in a catholic country. He studied at Pisa and taught mathematics at Padua. He was a leading mathematical physicist of his age. He deserved unique characteristics since his childhood. Once in his teen age, he reached at a church where he got so many strange things. Everybody visiting church had got no newness and strange over there. But instead of the other happenings or the praying of the church, that boy was fully fascinated by the bulbs hanging and swinging on the roof. He minutely observed their motion. He took it as his case of study. On the basis of same curiosity, he later invented pulse meter used to measure the pulse of human being.
As a young man, Galileo conducted elegant (clever but simple) experiments showing the inadequacy of Aristotle's theory of violent motion. He studied the pendulum and showed that it, like the planets, sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
But due to the poor financial status of his family and the sudden death of his father in 1591, he had to take the sole responsibility of his family. So, just to live there, he had to run so many tuition classes and had to labor hard which restricted him to pay more attention in his new discovery. But still he didn't lose his patience. While working in Venice in the spring of 1609, his troubles began when and where he learnt of the recent inventions of the telescope. Later, after returning to Padua he made a telescope of his own and undertook a series of observations.
The first thing Galileo looked at with his telescope was the Moon and discovered that the surface of the Moon was not smooth. There are mountains and valleys. He looked at Jupiter and discovered its moons. Again, he turned his telescope on the Sun and discovered the curious spots on the Sun's surface. These dark areas were not constant. he could see them changed in shape and position from night to night, from month to month.
Excited by his experiments, in 1611, Galileo went to Rome. He took his telescope with him. Many people were impressed by his findings when he said that he could prove mathematically that the Earth goes around the Sun not the Earth, that Ptolemy was wrong and Copernicus right.
But it was the erecting finger and a direct threat to the pontifical (related to pope) court which was not easily taken by church. Even hes great inventions and observations were misinterpreted by church authority and tried to make him compel to give up his job, but being innocent and having faith on his observation Galileo didn't surrender himself in front of the church. That's why, after all he was condemned to life imprisonment (served in house arrant) in 1633 where he was restricted to do any publishing works. But he was not a passive onlooker. Even in the imprisonment, by taking help of his daughter, he completed his one of the precious work - Discourse Concerning to New Sciences. But he couldn't get it printed. Before to know the glorious impact of his work in this world, he passed away from the world in 1642.
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