LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Galileo: Florence
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Faced with the need to somehow earn a living, Galileo 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 ... 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. 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?
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In 1612 Galileo published a Discourse on Floating Bodies, and, in 1613, Letters on the Sunspots. In this latter work he first expressed his position in favor of Copernicus. In 1614 both his daughters entered the Franciscan convent of Saint Mathew, near Florence. Virginia became Sister Maria Celeste and Livia, Sister Arcangela. Maria Gamba, their mother, had been left behind in Padua when Galileo moved to Florence.
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After the Inquisition trial Galileo was sentenced to an enforced residence in Siena. He was later allowed to live in seclusion at Arcetri near Florence, and it is likely that Galileo's statement of defiance was made as he left Siena for Arcetri. In spite of infirmities and, at the last, blindness, Galileo continued the pursuit of scientific truth until his death. His last book, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (tr., 3d ed. 1939, repr. 1952), which contains most of his contributions to physics, appeared in 1638. In 1979 Pope John Paul II asked that the 1633 conviction be annulled. However, since teaching the Copernican theory had been banned in 1616, it was technically possible that a new trial could find Galileo guilty; ... it was suggested that the 1616 prohibition be reversed, and this happened in 1992.
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After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena), Galileo was allowed to return to his villa at Arcetri near Florence, where he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest, and where he later became blind. It was while Galileo was under house arrest that he dedicated his time to one of his finest works, Two New Sciences. Here he summarized work he had done some forty years earlier, on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials. This book has received high praise from both Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. As a result of this work, Galileo is often called, the "father of modern physics."
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Galileo's years as a student at Pisa marked a turning point for him. Never really interested in medicine, he discovered he had a talent for mathematics. In 1585, he persuaded his father to let him leave the university. Back in Florence with his family, Galileo spent the next four years as a tutor in mathematics. During this time, he began to question Aristotelian philosophy and scientific thought. At the same time, he gained his first public notice with his new hydrostatic balance, an instrument used to find the specific gravity of objects by weighing them in water.
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In September 1610 Galileo finally abandoned Padua for Florence. His researches with the telescope had been rewarded. The telescope was invented by Demiscianus, an eminent Greek scholar, at the request of Prince Cesi, president of the Lyncean Academy. It was used by Galileo as early as 1612, but was not introduced into England until much later. In 1655 the word telescope was inserted and explained in Bagwell’s Mysteries of Astronomy, trunk or cylander being the terms until then ordinarily employed.
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