Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Tuscany in 1564 and was the son of Florentine musician Vincenzo Galilei. Galileo was a very intelligent boy and at age 17, due to his fathers influence, he went to the University of Pisa. He was enrolled as a medical student but later turned to math after persuading his father that he did not want to be a doctor. He was tutored by Ricci, who was a Tuscan court mathematician. Galileo became a talented mathematician and by his early twenties wrote tracts, which added to Archimedes results on center of gravity of shapes. Due to this he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at Pisa.
             At age 28, in 1592, he moved to Padua, which was in the Venetian Republic. There he married Marina Gamba, 21 years old. They had three children. In 1610 Galileo, at age 46 developed the telescope, which led to many discoveries such as mountains on the moon, the moons of Jupiter, and phases of Venus. After these discoveries Galileo landed the job of mathematician and philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany and returned to his homeland.
             The discovery of the telescope and all that it has proved strongly favored Copernicus' view that the sun is at the center of the world and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun. This was opposite to the church's view and this meant trouble could arise because the church was in power at the time. Galileo, in 1611 went to Rome and met with the Jesuit astronomers. He felt that if he could get them on his side he would have little trouble with church in the future. The leader of the Jesuit astronomy Father Clavius had a hard time believing there were mountains on the moon.
             In 1611 another of Galileo's discoveries brought more tension between him and the Jesuits. Galileo had been observing the motion of sunspots-small dark spots on the surface of the sun, which was easily visible through a telescope at sunset. A German Jesuit Chri
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