Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, engineer, astronomer, and philosopher, responsible for some of the most revolutionary developments in the history of science. Building upon the work of Nicholas Copernicus before him, he laid down the foundations that Isaac Newton needed for formulating his famous three laws of motion and theory of universal gravitation, which in turned paved the way for Albert Einstein to reveal deep mysteries about the nature of space and time itself with his special and general theories of relativity.

This chain of discovery depended on Galileo and the other great minds being daring enough and persistent enough to challenge that which was accepted as unquestionable scientific fact by their peers.

Galileo is known for dispelling colossal myths about forces and planetary motion that had perpetuated for centuries before him. His work was one of the most important factors in the eventual acceptance of Copernican heliocentrism as a model for the solar system, which had profound philosophical implications as well as scientific ones, as it completely contradicted the long standing belief that the Earth was the centre of the universe.

 

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I’ve included a selection of timelines that we’ve found in our new directory have Galileo on them. The main “Galileo” timeline shown first doesn’t have many events at the moment, but it’s already quite useful as a starting point to find out more. It contains his most notable works and a couple of major experiments among other things. This is the kind of timeline that will only really take off once we release our custom events feature (coming soon!), as for now we can only include events that have entire Wikipedia articles about them.

Galileo Galilei

Mostly publications plus a couple of key events and influences.  A small but useful starting point to our directory timeline for Galileo.

Embedded timelines are read-only, click on the  icon to open the timeline on the main site for full controls and all the features.

 

Scientists

See how Galileo fits into the bigger picture with this timeline of scientists. Do you know which giant of science was born in the same year he died? Scroll to the 17th century and zoom in to find out!

Embedded timelines are read-only, click on the  icon to open the timeline on the main site for full controls and all the features.

 

More timelines related to Galileo Galilei

1564 births

Italian astronomers

People from Pisa

University of Pisa alumni

Scientific instrument makers