Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642) was an Italian mathematician and natural philosopher born in Pisa who is best known for founding the quantitative study of motion. Sent to the University of Pisa to study medicine, he was drawn instead to mathematics by Ostilio Ricci's course on Euclid and left in 1585 without completing his degree. He taught mathematics privately and at Siena, and from 1592 held the chair of mathematics at the University of Padua for eighteen years. Through his study of inclined planes and the pendulum he formulated the law of falling bodies and showed that a projectile follows a parabolic path. With a telescope he built himself he studied lunar craters and discovered four moons of Jupiter, and he supported the Copernican system. In 1610 he became chief mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and he later wrote the Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems. He died at Arcetri near Florence in 1642.