On Tuesday, 5 February 2013
After four
years, Galileo had announced to his father that he wanted to be a monk. This
was not exactly what father had in mind, so Galileo was hastily withdrawn from
the monastery. In 1581, at the age of 17, he entered the University of Pisa to
study medicine, as his father wished.
Galileo
Galilei - Law of the Pendulum
At
age twenty, Galileo noticed a lamp swinging overhead while he was in a
cathedral. Curious to find out how long it took the lamp to swing back and
forth, he used his pulse to time large and small swings. Galileo discovered
something that no one else had ever realized: the period of each swing was
exactly the same. The law of the pendulum, which would eventually be used to
regulate clocks, made Galileo Galilei instantly famous.
Except
for mathematics, Galileo Galilei was bored with university. Galileo's family
was informed that their son was in danger of flunking out. A compromise was
worked out, where Galileo would be tutored full-time in mathematics by the
mathematician of the Tuscan court. Galileo's father was hardly overjoyed about
this turn of events, since a mathematician's earning power was roughly around
that of a musician, but it seemed that this might yet allow Galileo to
successfully complete his college education. However, Galileo soon left the
University of Pisa without a degree.
Galileo
Galilei - Mathematics
To
earn a living, Galileo Galilei started tutoring students in mathematics. He did
some experimenting with floating objects, developing a balance that could tell
him that a piece of, say, gold was 19.3 times heavier than the same volume of water.
He also started campaigning for his life's ambition: a position on the
mathematics faculty at a major university. Although Galileo was clearly
brilliant, he had offended many people in the field, who would choose other
candidates for vacancies.
Galileo
Galilei - Dante's Inferno
Ironically,
it was a lecture on literature that would turn Galileo's fortunes. The Academy
of Florence had been arguing over a 100-year-old controversy: What were the
location, shape, and dimensions of Dante's Inferno? Galileo Galilei wanted to
seriously answer the question from the point of view of a scientist.
Extrapolating from Dante's line that "[the giant Nimrod's] face was about
as long/And just as wide as St. Peter's cone in Rome," Galileo deduced
that Lucifer himself was 2,000 arm-length long. The audience was impressed, and
within the year, Galileo had received a three-year appointment to the
University of Pisa, the same university that never granted him a degree!
The
Leaning Tower of Pisa
At
the time that Galileo arrived at the University, some debate had started up on
one of Aristotle's "laws" of nature, that heavier objects fell faster
than lighter objects. Aristotle's word had been accepted as gospel truth, and
there had been few attempts to actually test Aristotle's conclusions by
actually conducting an experiment!
According
to legend, Galileo decided to try. He needed to be able to drop the objects
from a great height. The perfect building was right at hand--the Tower of Pisa,
54 meters tall. Galileo climbed up to the top of the building carrying a
variety of balls of varying size and weight, and dumped them off of the top.
They all landed at the base of the building at the same time (legend says that
the demonstration was witnessed by a huge crowd of students and professors).
Aristotle was wrong.
However,
Galileo Galilei continued to behave rudely to his colleagues, not a good move
for a junior member of the faculty. "Men are like wine flasks," he
once said to a group of students. "...look at....bottles with the handsome
labels. When you taste them, they are full of air or perfume or rouge. These
are bottles fit only to pee into!"Not surprisingly, the University of Pisa
chose not to renew Galileo's contract.
Necessity
is the Mother of Invention
Galileo
Galilei moved on to the University of Padua. By 1593, he was desperate in need
of additional cash. His father had died, so Galileo was the head of his family,
and personally responsible for his family. Debts were pressing down on him,
most notably, the dowry for one of his sisters, which was paid in installments
over decades (a dowry could be thousands of crowns, and Galileo's annual salary
was 180 crowns). Debtor's prison was a real threat if Galileo returned to
Florence.
What
Galileo needed was to come up with some sort of device that could make him a
tidy profit. A rudimentary thermometer (which, for the first time, allowed
temperature variations to be measured) and an ingenious device to raise water
from aquifers found no market. He found greater success in 1596 with a military
compass that could be used to accurately aim cannonballs. A modified civilian
version that could be used for land surveying came out in 1597, and ended up
earning a fair amount of money for Galileo. It helped his profit margin that 1)
the instruments were sold for three times the cost of manufacture, 2) he also
offered classes on how to use the instrument, and 3) the actual toolmaker was
paid dirt-poor wages.
A
good thing. Galileo needed the money to support his siblings, his mistress (a
21 year old with a reputation as a woman of easy habits), and his three
children (two daughters and a boy). By 1602, Galileo's name was famous enough
to help bring in students to the University, where Galileo was busily
experimenting with magnets.
