![]() ![]() Galileo’s son, Vincenzo, born in 1606, studied medicine at the University of Pisa, married well and resided in Florence as an adult. He in turn gave food and supplies to the impoverished convent. From inside the convent, she baked and sewed for him, among other tasks. Galileo maintained close ties with his older daughter, who became known as Sister Maria Celeste. In 1613, he placed his two daughters, Virginia, born in 1600, and Livia, born in 1601, in a convent near Florence, where they remained for the rest of their lives, despite their father’s eventual troubles with the Catholic Church. Galileo had three children with a woman named Marina Gamba, who he never married. More significantly, Galileo’s observations would lead him to support the theory, laid out in 1543 by Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, that the sun is the center of the universe and the Earth and other planets revolve around it. Galileo’s discoveries brought him acclaim and in 1610 he was named the chief mathematician and philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany as well as a chief mathematician at the University of Pisa. ![]() Galileo soon went on to make other findings with his telescope, including that there were four moons orbiting Jupiter and that Venus went through a complete set of phases (indicating the planet traveled around the sun). That fall, he pointed it at the moon and discovered it had craters and mountains, debunking the common belief that the moon’s surface was smooth. In 1609, Galileo learned about the device and developed one of his own, significantly improving its design. Lippershey’s patent application for the device in 1608 is the earliest on record however, because the Dutch government decided the telescope was too easy to copy and because another Dutch instrument maker had tried to patent the device a short time after Lippershey, no patent was granted. Galileo didn’t invent the telescope-Dutch eyeglass maker Hans Lippershey is generally credited with its creation-but he was the first person to use the optical instrument to systematically study the heavens. He continued his mathematics studies on his own and earned money by giving private lessons before returning to the University of Pisa in 1589 to teach math. Galileo left the school in 1585 without earning a degree. Instead, though, he became interested in mathematics and shifted his focus to that subject. When he was 16, Galileo enrolled at the University of Pisa to study medicine, at his father’s urging. As a pre-teen, Galileo began studying at a monastery near Florence and considered becoming a monk however, his father wasn’t in favor of his son pursuing a religious life and eventually removed him from school. Although his father was from a noble family, they weren’t wealthy. Galileo, whose father was a lute player and music theorist, was born in Pisa, Italy.
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