Galileo was a pioneer of modern physics and telescopic astronomy who was born on February 15, 1564 near Pisa, Italy. As an Italian physicist and astronomer, he was the first to use the telescope to discover many undiscovered realms of space. His discoveries of sunspots, lunar mountains and valleys, and the satellites of Jupiter formed the basis of modern astronomy. His discoveries opened a gateway into the unexplored areas of the universe.
             Galileo's education began in Vallambrosa where monks taught him, but the takeoff point of his career was when he registered at the University of Pisa at the age of seventeen. He learned of the studies of Aristotle and studied his writings on logic, motion, and the structure of the universe. Over the years Galileo criticized and refuted many of Aristotle's views. He became one of the most relentless advocates against of Aristotle's doctrines. Galileo's studies began in the Cathedral of Pisa one day as Galileo was watching a lamp that was swinging from the ceiling. He observed a rhythm in the swings of the lamp and noticed that the lamp always took the same time to go from one end of its swing to the other. His goal was to find out whether or not all of the swings took the same amount of time. He and a friend both made pendulums and decided to count the number of oscillations that the pendulums made in a given amount of time. They found that both pendulums made the same number of oscillations at the same time. Thus he discovered the law of isochronism, or equality of time, of oscillations. By 1586, Galileo left the University of Pisa and went back to his family in Florence.
             In Florence, Galileo applied himself to geometry and from the study of Euclid he soon passed to that of other ancient mathematicians, especially Archimedes. Galileo found in Archimedes a teacher for whom he learned the power and the wide intellectual range of mathematical reasoning. Galileo studies produced two books that he ...