1564 Galileo is born in Pisa, February 15.

1581 Galileo enrolls at University of Pisa (dops

out).

1610 Galileo discovers the moons of Jupiter.

The Starry Messenger is published. Galileo

is appointed chief mathematician and

philosopher to the grand duke of Tuscany,

Cosimo II.

1632 Galileo publishes Dialogue on

the Two Chief World Systems:

Ptolemaic and Copernican.

1633 Galileo stands trial for

heresy by the Holy Office of

the Inquisition; Dialogue is

prohibited.

1641 Vincenzio Galilei draws his

father’s design for a pendulum clock.

1642 Galileo dies in Arcetri, January

8. Isaac Newton is born in England,

December 25.

(final burial 1737)

1728 English astronomer James Bradley (1693–1762)

provides first evidence for the Earth’s motion through space

based on the aberration of starlight.

1835 Galileo’s Dialogue is dropped from Index of Prohibited Books.

1892 University of Pisa awards Galileo an honorary degree—

250 years after his death.

1971 Apollo 15 commander David R. Scott drops a falcon

feather and a hammer on the lunar surface; when they fall

together he says, “This proves that Mr. Galileo was correct.”

1982 Pope John Paul II establishes Galileo

Commission with four formal study groups to

reinvestigate the Galileo affair.

1989 NASA launches Galileo

spacecraft to study the moons

of Jupiter at close range.

1995 Galileo reaches Jupiter.

1992 Pope John Paul II publicly endorses Galileo’s

philosophy, noting how “intelligibility, attested to

by the marvelous discoveries of science and

technology, leads us, in the last analysis, to that

transcendent and primordial thought imprinted on

all things.”

1995-2003 Galileo’s successful reconnaissance

of the Medicean stars,