Is God a Mathematician_ - Mario Livio [30]
Cicero did not exaggerate in describing Archimedes’ greatness. In fact, I have deliberately put the bar for the title of “magician” so high that progressing from the giant Archimedes, we have to leap forward no fewer than about eighteen centuries before encountering a man of similar stature. Unlike Archimedes, who said he could move the Earth, this magician insisted that the Earth was already moving.
Archimedes’ Best Student
Galileo Galilei (figure 16) was born in Pisa on February 15, 1564. His father, Vincenzo, was a musician, and his mother, Giulia Ammannati, was a witty, if rather ill-disposed woman who couldn’t tolerate stupidity. In 1581, Galileo followed his father’s advice and enrolled in the faculty of arts of the University of Pisa to study medicine. His interest in medicine, however, withered almost as soon as he got in, in favor of mathematics. Consequently, during the summer vacation of 1583, Galileo persuaded the mathematician of the Tuscan Court, Ostilio Ricci (1540–1603), to meet with his father and to convince the latter that Galileo was destined to become a mathematician. The question was indeed settled soon thereafter—the enthusiastic youth became absolutely bewitched by the works of Archimedes: “Those who read his works,” he wrote, “realize only too clearly how inferior are all other minds compared with Archimedes’, and what small hope is left of ever discovering things similar to the ones he discovered.” At the time, little did Galileo know that he himself possessed one of those few minds that were not inferior to that of the Greek master. Inspired by the legendary story of Archimedes and the king’s wreath, Galileo published in 1586 a small book entitled The Little Balance, about a hydrostatic balance he had invented. He later made further reference to Archimedes in a literary lecture at the Florence Academy, in which he discussed a rather unusual topic—the location and size of hell in Dante’s epic poem Inferno.
Figure 16
In 1589 Galileo was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa, partly because of the strong recommendation of Christopher Clavius (1538–1612), a respected mathematician and astronomer from Rome, whom Galileo visited in 1587. The young mathematician’s star was now definitely on the rise. Galileo spent the next three years setting forth his first thoughts on the theory of motion. These essays, which were clearly stimulated by Archimedes’ work, contain a fascinating mixture of interesting ideas and false assertions. For instance, together with the pioneering realization that one can test theories about falling bodies using an inclined plane to slow down the motion, Galileo incorrectly states that when bodies are dropped from towers, “wood moves more swiftly than lead at the beginning of its motion.” Galileo’s inclinations and general thought process during this phase of his life have been somewhat misrepresented by his first biographer, Vincenzio Viviani (1622–1703). Viviani created the popular image of a meticulous, hard-nosed experimentalist who gained new insights exclusively from detailed observations of natural phenomena. In fact, until 1592 when he moved to Padua, Galileo’s orientation and methodology were primarily mathematical. He relied mostly on thought experiments and on an Archimedean description of the world in terms of geometrical figures that obeyed mathematical