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104-810: Fabio Garbari (born 1937) is an Italian botanist who has a degree in Biological Science from the University of Pisa awarded in 1958. In 2000–2002 he was a professor in the Department of Botanical Science ( Dipartimento di Scienze Botaniche ) of the University of Pisa . In 2019 he was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal by the Royal Horticultural Society . This article about an Italian botanist

208-621: A book on the subject, encouraged by the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII in 1623. Barberini was a friend and admirer of Galileo, and had opposed the admonition of Galileo in 1616. Galileo's resulting book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , was published in 1632, with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission. Earlier, Pope Urban VIII had personally asked Galileo to give arguments for and against heliocentrism in

312-602: A brief treatise entitled Sidereus Nuncius ( Starry Messenger ). On 30 November 1609, Galileo aimed his telescope at the Moon . While not being the first person to observe the Moon through a telescope (English mathematician Thomas Harriot had done so four months before but only saw a "strange spottednesse"), Galileo was the first to deduce the cause of the uneven waning as light occlusion from lunar mountains and craters . In his study, he also made topographical charts, estimating

416-611: A debate with Galileo, sending him an essay disputing the Copernican system. Galileo later stated that he believed this essay to have been instrumental in the action against Copernicanism that followed. Ingoli may have been commissioned by the Inquisition to write an expert opinion on the controversy, with the essay providing the basis for the Inquisition's actions. The essay focused on eighteen physical and mathematical arguments against heliocentrism. It borrowed primarily from Tycho Brahe's arguments, notably that heliocentrism would require

520-409: A friend of Galileo, included a realistic depiction of the Moon in one of his paintings; he probably used his own telescope to make the observation. On 7 January 1610, Galileo observed with his telescope what he described at the time as "three fixed stars, totally invisible by their smallness", all close to Jupiter, and lying on a straight line through it. Observations on subsequent nights showed that

624-487: A genuinely pious Catholic, Galileo fathered three children out of wedlock with Marina Gamba . They had two daughters, Virginia (born 1600) and Livia (born 1601), and a son, Vincenzo (born 1606). Due to their illegitimate birth, Galileo considered the girls unmarriageable, if not posing problems of prohibitively expensive support or dowries, which would have been similar to Galileo's previous extensive financial problems with two of his sisters. Their only worthy alternative

728-464: A language centre, where they can attend courses in foreign languages, a sports centre ( Cus Pisa ) that arranges for many sports intramural leagues and allows sports practice in almost all the disciplines available in Italy, and six university refectories ( Mense universitarie ). The University of Pisa is not organized in the form of one unique campus, but rather its many buildings are scattered throughout

832-537: A lutenist and composer who added to Galileo's financial burdens for the rest of his life. Michelangelo was unable to contribute his fair share of their father's promised dowries to their brothers-in-law, who later attempted to seek legal remedies for payments due. Michelangelo also occasionally had to borrow funds from Galileo to support his musical endeavours and excursions. These financial burdens may have contributed to Galileo's early desire to develop inventions that would bring him additional income. When Galileo Galilei

936-401: A method for measuring the apparent size of a star without a telescope. As described in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , his method was to hang a thin rope in his line of sight to the star and measure the maximum distance from which it would wholly obscure the star. From his measurements of this distance and of the width of the rope, he could calculate the angle subtended by

1040-568: A pamphlet, An Astronomical Disputation on the Three Comets of the Year 1618 , which discussed the nature of a comet that had appeared late in November of the previous year. Grassi concluded that the comet was a fiery body that had moved along a segment of a great circle at a constant distance from the earth, and since it moved in the sky more slowly than the Moon, it must be farther away than

1144-732: A period of protests, the “Tesi della Sapienza”, one of the milestones of the 1968 student movement in Italy, were compiled in Pisa. This phase of the unrest was particularly animated in the city with some dramatic moments. From the end of the 1970s, the University's Natural History Museum moved to the enchanting 14th century Charterhouse of Calci , a building of priceless historic and architectural worth. The museum houses numerous rooms dedicated to zoology, mineralogy and palaeontology as well as Italy's largest freshwater aquarium and Whale gallery with more than thirty whale skeletons exhibited in an ancient portico. The Ruberti reform of 1989, which envisaged

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1248-643: A powerful argument against both the Ptolemaic system and the geoheliocentric system of Tycho Brahe. A dispute over claimed priority in the discovery of sunspots, and in their interpretation, led Galileo to a long and bitter feud with the Jesuit Christoph Scheiner . In the middle was Mark Welser , to whom Scheiner had announced his discovery, and who asked Galileo for his opinion. Both of them were unaware of Johannes Fabricius ' earlier observation and publication of sunspots. Galileo observed

1352-502: A practical use for his discovery. Determining the east–west position of ships at sea required their clocks be synchronized with clocks at the prime meridian . Solving this longitude problem had great importance to safe navigation and large prizes were established by Spain and later Holland for its solution. Since eclipses of the moons he discovered were relatively frequent and their times could be predicted with great accuracy, they could be used to set shipboard clocks and Galileo applied for

1456-420: A slightly higher number of administrative personnel, technicians, foreign language assistants and librarians. There are around 50,000 students enrolled, and in a city with a population of approximately 90,000 inhabitants, this makes Pisa a true city campus. The students come mainly from Tuscany and Liguria , with a significant intake from many other regions, above all from the south of Italy. A sizeable number of

1560-523: A thing. Compounding this problem, other astronomers had difficulty confirming Galileo's observations. When he demonstrated the telescope in Bologna, the attendees struggled to see the moons. One of them, Martin Horky, noted that some fixed stars, such as Spica Virginis , appeared double through the telescope. He took this as evidence that the instrument was deceptive when viewing the heavens, casting doubt on

1664-438: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . University of Pisa The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place its origins in the 11th century. It is certain, however, that from the middle of the 12th century Pisa had a “Universitas” in the original sense of the word, that is, a group of students who gathered around masters. It was during this period that Leonardo Fibonacci

1768-480: Is documentary evidence that shows persistent academic activity with a slow recovery starting in 1355. The end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century saw Pisa and its Studium heading towards a slow death. The war, which had allowed the Florentines to conquer the city, was so socially and economically damaging that it made preserving even the most essential academic activity impossible. During

1872-530: Is mentioned in the film Don Juan (1926). 43°42′59.43″N 10°23′54.45″E  /  43.7165083°N 10.3984583°E  / 43.7165083; 10.3984583 Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( / ˌ ɡ æ l ɪ ˈ l eɪ oʊ ˌ ɡ æ l ɪ ˈ l eɪ / , US also / ˌ ɡ æ l ɪ ˈ l iː oʊ -/ ; Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛːi] ) or mononymously as Galileo ,

1976-607: The Dialogue , his final interrogation, in July 1633, concluded with his being threatened with torture if he did not tell the truth, but he maintained his denial despite the threat. The sentence of the Inquisition was delivered on 22 June. It was in three essential parts: According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered

2080-584: The Duchy of Florence ) on 15 February 1564, the first of six children of Vincenzo Galilei , a leading lutenist , composer, and music theorist , and Giulia Ammannati , the daughter of a prominent merchant, who had married two years earlier in 1562, when he was 42, and she was 24. Galileo became an accomplished lutenist himself and would have learned early from his father a skepticism for established authority. Three of Galileo's five siblings survived infancy. The youngest, Michelangelo (or Michelagnolo), also became

2184-636: The Florentine Academy , he presented two lectures, On the Shape, Location, and Size of Dante's Inferno , in an attempt to propose a rigorous cosmological model of Dante's hell . Being inspired by the artistic tradition of the city and the works of the Renaissance artists , Galileo acquired an aesthetic mentality . While a young teacher at the Accademia, he began a lifelong friendship with

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2288-600: The Milky Way , previously believed to be nebulous , and found it to be a multitude of stars packed so densely that they appeared from Earth to be clouds. He located many other stars too distant to be visible to the naked eye. He observed the double star Mizar in Ursa Major in 1617. In the Starry Messenger , Galileo reported that stars appeared as mere blazes of light, essentially unaltered in appearance by

2392-574: The Roman Inquisition by Father Niccolò Lorini , who claimed that Galileo and his followers were attempting to reinterpret the Bible, which was seen as a violation of the Council of Trent and looked dangerously like Protestantism . Lorini specifically cited Galileo's letter to Castelli. Galileo went to Rome to defend himself and his ideas. At the start of 1616, Francesco Ingoli initiated

2496-563: The Sun would cause its illuminated hemisphere to face the Earth when it was on the opposite side of the Sun and to face away from the Earth when it was on the Earth-side of the Sun. In Ptolemy's geocentric model , it was impossible for any of the planets' orbits to intersect the spherical shell carrying the Sun. Traditionally, the orbit of Venus was placed entirely on the near side of the Sun, where it could exhibit only crescent and new phases. It

2600-524: The Tychonic , Capellan and Extended Capellan models, each either with or without a daily rotating Earth. These all explained the phases of Venus without the 'refutation' of full heliocentrism's prediction of stellar parallax. Galileo's discovery of the phases of Venus was thus his most empirically practically influential contribution to the two-stage transition from full geocentrism to full heliocentrism via geo-heliocentrism. In 1610, Galileo also observed

2704-513: The University of Paris , even though it managed to retain a certain degree of autonomy. At that time, five faculties (Theology, Law, Medicine, Science and Arts), exams, different academic qualifications (bachelor, master and doctoral degrees) and degree theses came into being. The Scuola Normale Superiore was established between 1810 and 1813. It started out as a subsidiary of the École Normale in Paris and closed immediately to be reopened in 1846 with

2808-434: The first congress of Italian scientists , which saw the participation of over 400 scholars and 300 experts in the various branches of knowledge from different states of the peninsula. It was during this period that the university was at the centre of the reform called for by Provveditore Gaetano Giorgini , which saw the faculties increase in number to six (Theology, Law, Arts, Medicine, Mathematics and Natural Sciences) and for

2912-535: The thermometer , and, in 1586, published a small book on the design of a hydrostatic balance he had invented (which first brought him to the attention of the scholarly world). Galileo also studied disegno , a term encompassing fine art, and, in 1588, obtained the position of instructor in the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence, teaching perspective and chiaroscuro . In the same year, upon invitation by

3016-548: The Aristotelian belief in the immutability of the heavens. Perhaps based only on descriptions of the first practical telescope which Hans Lippershey tried to patent in the Netherlands in 1608, Galileo, in the following year, made a telescope with about 3x magnification. He later made improved versions with up to about 30x magnification. With a Galilean telescope , the observer could see magnified, upright images on

3120-646: The Cherub was placed above this gateway. In the Christian tradition, the Cherub represents an angelic being with a clearer vision of God, who in turn represents absolute knowledge. Since then, the Cherub has become the iconographic symbol of the University of Pisa and, in more recent times, the Order of the Cherub is awarded to members of the university teaching staff who have contributed to enhancing its prestige. In 1497,

3224-598: The Church, the majority of educated people subscribed to the Aristotelian geocentric view that the Earth is the centre of the Universe and the orbit of all heavenly bodies, or Tycho Brahe's new system blending geocentrism with heliocentrism. Opposition to heliocentrism and Galileo's writings on it combined religious and scientific objections. Religious opposition to heliocentrism arose from biblical passages implying

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3328-669: The Earth—it was what is commonly known as a terrestrial telescope or a spyglass. He could also use it to observe the sky; for a time he was one of those who could construct telescopes good enough for that purpose. On 25 August 1609, he demonstrated one of his early telescopes, with a magnification of about 8x or 9x, to Venetian lawmakers. His telescopes were also a profitable sideline for Galileo, who sold them to merchants who found them useful both at sea and as items of trade. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March 1610 in

3432-605: The Florentine painter Cigoli . In 1589, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics in Pisa. In 1591, his father died, and he was entrusted with the care of his younger brother Michelagnolo . In 1592, he moved to the University of Padua where he taught geometry, mechanics , and astronomy until 1610. During this period, Galileo made significant discoveries in both pure fundamental science (for example, kinematics of motion and astronomy) as well as practical applied science (for example, strength of materials and pioneering

3536-722: The Italian Risorgimento . A memorial plaque in Palazzo della Sapienza commemorates the volunteers who “died fighting for the rebirth of Italy”, while the Italian flag used by the university battalion was honoured with the gold military medal by the Italian Republic in 1948. With the creation of the Kingdom of Italy , the University of Pisa, which now counted around 560 matriculated students, re-emerged with all

3640-581: The Lorraine dynasty. It was thanks to these enlightened innovators and reformers that numerous works and the establishment of the new Chairs of Experimental Physics and Chemistry were created.   The annexation of Tuscany to the Napoleonic Empire at the beginning of the 19th century brought about the transformation of the Studium into an imperial Academy: the university became a subsidiary of

3744-475: The Moon. Grassi's arguments and conclusions were criticised in a subsequent article, Discourse on Comets , published under the name of one of Galileo's disciples, a Florentine lawyer named Mario Guiducci , although it had been largely written by Galileo himself. Galileo and Guiducci offered no definitive theory of their own on the nature of comets, although they did present some tentative conjectures that are now known to be mistaken. (The correct approach to

3848-455: The Pisan institute suffered a new period of decline and was moved to Florence for nine years. The rise to the throne of Duke Cosimo I dei Medici marked the beginning of a new era. The formal reopening of the university on 1 November 1543 was, in fact, considered to be a second founding. With the 1545 Statute, Cosimo managed to raise the quality of the teaching, making the University of Pisa one of

3952-556: The Pope and the Jesuits , who had both strongly supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. During this time, he wrote Two New Sciences (1638), primarily concerning kinematics and the strength of materials . Galileo was born in Pisa (then part of

4056-562: The Studium Generale was a higher institute of education founded or confirmed by a universal authority, namely the papacy or the empire. Pisa was among the first European cities to vaunt a papal attestation, followed by Prague in 1347 and Heidelberg in 1386. At the outset in Pisa, lessons in Theology, Civil Law, Canon Law and Medicine were established. The first years of the new Studium were particularly difficult, although there

4160-611: The Sun or even the orbit of the Earth. It would not be until much later that astronomers realized the apparent magnitudes of stars were caused by an optical phenomenon called the airy disk , and were functions of their brightness rather than true physical size (see Magnitude#History ). Galileo defended heliocentrism based on his astronomical observations of 1609 . In December 1613, the Grand Duchess Christina of Florence confronted one of Galileo's friends and followers, Benedetto Castelli , with biblical objections to

4264-511: The Two Chief World Systems the Dialogue on the Ebb and Flow of the Sea . The reference to tides was removed from the title by order of the Inquisition. For Galileo, the tides were caused by the sloshing back and forth of water in the seas as a point on the Earth's surface sped up and slowed down because of the Earth's rotation on its axis and revolution around the Sun. He circulated his first account of

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4368-1176: The University of Pisa include Anatomists Lorenzo Bellini and Marcello Malpighi , Chemist Robert Schiff , Computer scientist Egon Börger , Engineer Corradino D'Ascanio , Mathematicians Eugenio Beltrami , Enrico Bombieri , Giovanni Alfonso Borelli , Sergio Campanato , Benedetto Castelli , Corrado De Concini , Ennio De Giorgi , Luigi Guido Grandi , Alessandro Marchetti , Claudio Procesi , Leonida Tonelli , Pathologist Angelo Maffucci , Physicians Pietro Grocco and Paolo Mascagni , Physicists Bernard H. Lavenda , Carlo Matteucci , Roy McWeeny , Giulio Racah , Gian-Carlo Wick , Zoologist Enrica Calabresi , Economist Giuseppe Toniolo , Egalitarian Philippe Buonarroti , Historians Jože Pirjevec and Pasquale Villari , Journalist Luciano Bianciardi , Jurists Francesco Accarigi , Carlo Costamagna , Bartolus de Saxoferrato , Baldus de Ubaldis , Linguist Mauro Cristofani , Philosophers Armando Carlini , Arnold Davidson , Dominic of Flanders , Lorenzo Magalotti , Ugo Spirito , Poets David Levi , Valerio Magrelli , Giovanni Pascoli , 16th-century scholar Girolamo Maggi , and Writer Bernard Comment . The University of Pisa

4472-3386: The Younger , Pietro Accolti , Francesco Barberini , Cesare Borgia , Giovanni Antonio Guadagni , Francisco de Remolins , Francesco Martelli , Bandino Panciatici , Raffaele Riario , Giovanni Battista Tolomei , and Popes Clement IX , Clement XII , Leo X , Paul III , Urban VIII , Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff , and Minister Angus Morrison . In sciences, notable alumni include Astrophysicists Paolo Farinella , Franco Pacini , Viviana Acquaviva , Biophysicist Clara Franzini-Armstrong , Botanist Giovanni Arcangeli , Geneticist Guido Pontecorvo , and Mathematicians Aldo Andreotti , Enrico Betti , Vincenzo Brunacci , Cesare Burali-Forti , Bonaventura Cavalieri , Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja , Giovanni Ceva , Luigi Fantappiè , Alessio Figalli , Guido Fubini , Christopher Hacon , Giuseppe Lauricella , Salvatore Pincherle , Ferdinando Pio Rosellini , Giovanni Salvemini , Carlo Somigliana , Vito Volterra , Guido Zappa , Neuroscientist Emilio Bizzi , Physicians Vincenzo Chiarugi , Paolo Macchiarini , Francesco Redi , and François Carlo Antommarchi , Physicists Adolfo Bartoli , Temistocle Calzecchi-Onesti , Ennio Candotti , Nello Carrara , Enrico Fermi , Galileo Galilei , Luca Gammaitoni , Antonio Pacinotti , Eligio Perucca , Luigi Puccianti , Franco Rasetti , Vasco Ronchi , and Carlo Rubbia . In other fields, notable alumni include Egyptologists Sergio Donadoni , Edda Bresciani , Gianluca Miniaci and Ippolito Rosellini , Fashion model Tania Bambaci , Film directors Mario Monicelli , Paolo Virzì and Simone Rapisarda Casanova , Historians Carlo Ginzburg , Camillo Porzio , and Mario Rosa , Librettist Giacinto Andrea Cicognini , Philologist Gian Biagio Conte , Philosophers Francesco Cattani da Diacceto , Aldo Gargani , Giovanni Gentile , Anna Camaiti Hostert , Eufrosin Poteca , and Jiyuan Yu , Physiologist Hugo Kronecker , Tenors Andrea Bocelli and Francesco Rasi , Agronomist Nazareno Strampelli , Anatomist Atto Tigri , Art historian and curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev , Civil engineer Henry Willey Reveley , Civil servant Bruno Ferrante , Computer scientists Elisa Bertino , Luca Cardelli , and Roberto Di Cosmo , Diplomat Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo , Economists Luigi Bodio and Paolo Malanima , Engineer Giacinto Morera , Intellectual Adriano Sofri , International civil servant Francesco Cappè , Journalists Lando Ferretti and Tiziano Terzani , Jurists Giuseppe Averani , Piero Calamandrei , Francesco Carrara , Antonio Cassese , Giovanni Lami , Remus Opreanu , Italian Constitutional Court Judge Sabino Cassese , Linguists Stefano Arduini and Luigi Rizzi , Nobel Laureate in Literature Giosuè Carducci , Managers Pier Francesco Guarguaglini , Luca Desiata , Naturalist Gaetano Savi , Poets Vincenzo da Filicaja , Giovanni Battista Guarini , and Mauro Nervi , Psychiatrist Silvano Arieti , Racing car and engine designer Carlo Chiti , Surgeon Andrea Vaccá Berlinghieri , Writers Pietro Citati , Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi , Margaret King , Antonio Tabucchi , and Zoologist Enrico Hillyer Giglioli . Prominent scholars who have taught at

4576-634: The book, and to be careful not to advocate heliocentrism. Whether unknowingly or deliberately, Simplicio, the defender of the Aristotelian geocentric view in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , was often caught in his own errors and sometimes came across as a fool. Indeed, although Galileo states in the preface of his book that the character is named after a famous Aristotelian philosopher ( Simplicius in Latin, "Simplicio" in Italian),

4680-410: The chandelier took the same amount of time to swing back and forth, no matter how far it was swinging. When he returned home, he set up two pendulums of equal length and swung one with a large sweep and the other with a small sweep and found that they kept time together. It was not until the work of Christiaan Huygens , almost one hundred years later, that the tautochrone nature of a swinging pendulum

4784-406: The condemned opinions, and initially he denied even defending them. However, he was eventually persuaded to admit that, contrary to his true intention, a reader of his Dialogue could well have obtained the impression that it was intended to be a defence of Copernicanism. In view of Galileo's rather implausible denial that he had ever held Copernican ideas after 1616 or ever intended to defend them in

4888-711: The departments. The lectures are mostly given in Italian, except for a number of courses at the faculty of foreign languages and literature, some scientific programmes, such as the international MSc in aerospace engineering ( EuMAS ), Master in Business Informatics, the Master of Science in Space Engineering and the Master in Computer Science and Networking, jointly offered with Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna . Students also have at their disposal

4992-485: The existence of the moons. Christopher Clavius 's observatory in Rome confirmed the observations and, although unsure how to interpret them, gave Galileo a hero's welcome when he visited the next year. Galileo continued to observe the satellites over the next eighteen months, and by mid-1611, he had obtained remarkably accurate estimates for their periods—a feat which Johannes Kepler had believed impossible. Galileo saw

5096-412: The faculties then present in the regulations and was acknowledged through the university reform of 1862, as one of the six principal national universities together with Turin , Pavia , Bologna , Naples and Palermo . The consolidation and expansion of the university, above all in the years straddling the 1800s and the 1900s , had a direct impact on the urban fabric development of the city even though

5200-432: The first few days of November 1473, the Studium in Pisa began to develop systematically at the request of Lorenzo dei Medici . In 1486, the construction of a building specifically for lessons was commissioned: the building, the future Palazzo della Sapienza , still the centre of the present-day University, was placed in the 13th century Piazza del Grano, which could be reached through the gateway dell’Abbondanza. The image of

5304-454: The first time in the world, the Chair of Agriculture and sheep-farming was created and entrusted to Cosimo Ridolfi . In the university and in the city, liberal and patriotic ideals were coming to the fore and these reached their peak when teachers and students formed a university battalion and joined the battle of Curtatone and Montanara in 1848. This was one of the most significant battles in

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5408-461: The fixed nature of the Earth. Scientific opposition came from Brahe, who argued that if heliocentrism were true, an annual stellar parallax should be observed, though none was at the time. Aristarchus and Copernicus had correctly postulated that parallax was negligible because the stars were so distant. However, Brahe countered that since stars appear to have measurable angular size , if the stars were that distant, they would have to be far larger than

5512-485: The fourth on 13 January. Galileo named the group of four the Medicean stars , in honour of his future patron, Cosimo II de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany , and Cosimo's three brothers. Later astronomers, however, renamed them Galilean satellites in honour of their discoverer. These satellites were independently discovered by Simon Marius on 8 January 1610 and are now called Io , Europa , Ganymede , and Callisto ,

5616-453: The heights of the mountains. The Moon was not what was long thought to have been a translucent and perfect sphere, as Aristotle claimed, and hardly the first "planet", an "eternal pearl to magnificently ascend into the heavenly empyrian", as put forth by Dante . Galileo is sometimes credited with the discovery of the lunar libration in latitude in 1632, although Thomas Harriot or William Gilbert may have done so before. The painter Cigoli,

5720-709: The inauguration of its present seat at Palazzo della Carovana in Piazza dei Cavalieri . The period of the Restoration led to a reconsideration of the organisation within the Studium, but not to the complete revocation of the Napoleonic experience. In 1826, lessons on Egyptology were introduced at the University of Pisa. This was a first in Europe and the world in general, leading to the renowned French-Tuscan expedition to Egypt between 1828 and 1829. In 1839, Pisa hosted

5824-530: The legal heir of Galileo and married Sestilia Bocchineri. Although Galileo seriously considered the priesthood as a young man, at his father's urging he instead enrolled in 1580 at the University of Pisa for a medical degree. He was influenced by the lectures of Girolamo Borro and Francesco Buonamici of Florence. In 1581, when he was studying medicine, he noticed a swinging chandelier , which air currents shifted about to swing in larger and smaller arcs. To him, it seemed, by comparison with his heartbeat, that

5928-544: The modern experimental method. He was initially a student and then a teacher of Mathematics at the University of Pisa before moving to Padova. It was in the city in Tuscany that he began the studies and experiments which were the basis of his revolutionary theories. The decline of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (Medici), in the middle of the 18th century, saw the downfall of the Studium in Pisa, which only picked up again with

6032-631: The most important in Europe for both teaching and research. The Duke established the Chair of Simples (Semplici in Botany) and appointed Luca Ghini : between 1543 and 1544 the Garden of Simples was founded. This was the first botanical garden in the world annexed to a university Studium. A few decades later, the garden was moved to its present position a few dozen metres from Piazza dei Miracoli , covering an area of around three hectares with 6,000 cultivated plants and seeds exchanged with other 400 structures in

6136-495: The motion of the Earth. Prompted by this incident, Galileo wrote a letter to Castelli in which he argued that heliocentrism was actually not contrary to biblical texts and that the Bible was an authority on faith and morals, not science. This letter was not published but circulated widely. Two years later, Galileo wrote a letter to Christina that expanded his arguments previously made in eight pages to forty pages. By 1615, Galileo's writings on heliocentrism had been submitted to

6240-401: The name "Simplicio" in Italian also has the connotation of "simpleton". This portrayal of Simplicio made Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems appear as an advocacy book: an attack on Aristotelian geocentrism and defence of the Copernican theory. Most historians agree Galileo did not act out of malice and felt blindsided by the reaction to his book. However, the Pope did not take

6344-432: The names given by Marius in his Mundus Iovialis published in 1614. Galileo's observations of the satellites of Jupiter caused controversy in astronomy: a planet with smaller planets orbiting it did not conform to the principles of Aristotelian cosmology , which held that all heavenly bodies should circle the Earth, and many astronomers and philosophers initially refused to believe that Galileo could have discovered such

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6448-570: The number of students increased only moderately (891 in 1912). The university gradually welcomed female students and in 1877, Ernestina Paper graduated in Medicine. She was the first woman to graduate from an Italian university and was followed by Cornelia Fabri in Mathematics and Erminia Pittaluga in Arts. The reform called for by the minister Giovanni Gentile in 1923, further confirmed

6552-535: The opinion that the sun stands still at the centre of the world and the Earth moves, and henceforth not to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatever, either orally or in writing." The decree of the Congregation of the Index banned Copernicus's De Revolutionibus and other heliocentric works until correction. For the next decade, Galileo stayed well away from the controversy. He revived his project of writing

6656-540: The painting, Stillman Drake wrote "there is no doubt now that the famous words were already attributed to Galileo before his death". However, an intensive investigation by astrophysicist Mario Livio has revealed that said painting is most probably a copy of an 1837 painting by the Flemish painter Roman-Eugene Van Maldeghem. After a period with the friendly Ascanio Piccolomini (the Archbishop of Siena ), Galileo

6760-473: The planet Saturn , and at first mistook its rings for planets, thinking it was a three-bodied system. When he observed the planet later, Saturn's rings were directly oriented to Earth, causing him to think that two of the bodies had disappeared. The rings reappeared when he observed the planet in 1616, further confusing him. Galileo observed the planet Neptune in 1612. It appears in his notebooks as one of many unremarkable dim stars. He did not realise that it

6864-421: The positions of these "stars" relative to Jupiter were changing in a way that would have been inexplicable if they had really been fixed stars . On 10 January, Galileo noted that one of them had disappeared, an observation which he attributed to its being hidden behind Jupiter. Within a few days, he concluded that they were orbiting Jupiter: he had discovered three of Jupiter's four largest moons . He discovered

6968-466: The previous decade, Barberini, the future Urban VIII, had come down on the side of Galileo and the Lincean Academy . Galileo's dispute with Grassi permanently alienated many Jesuits, and Galileo and his friends were convinced that they were responsible for bringing about his later condemnation, although supporting evidence for this is not conclusive. At the time of Galileo's conflict with

7072-418: The prizes. Observing the moons from a ship proved too difficult, but the method was used for land surveys, including the remapping of France. From September 1610, Galileo observed that Venus exhibits a full set of phases similar to that of the Moon . The heliocentric model of the Solar System developed by Nicolaus Copernicus predicted that all phases would be visible since the orbit of Venus around

7176-472: The properties of the pendulum and " hydrostatic balances". He was one of the earliest Renaissance developers of the thermoscope and the inventor of various military compasses . With an improved telescope he built, he observed the stars of the Milky Way , the phases of Venus , the four largest satellites of Jupiter , Saturn's rings , lunar craters and sunspots . He also built an early microscope . Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism

7280-431: The pseudonym Lothario Sarsio Sigensano, purporting to be one of his own pupils. The Assayer was Galileo's devastating reply to the Astronomical Balance . It has been widely recognized as a masterpiece of polemical literature, in which "Sarsi's" arguments are subjected to withering scorn. It was greeted with wide acclaim, and particularly pleased the new pope, Urban VIII , to whom it had been dedicated. In Rome, in

7384-433: The rebellious phrase " And yet it moves ". There was a claim that a 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school, in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911, depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words "E pur si muove" written on the wall of his dungeon. The earliest known written account of the legend dates to a century after his death. Based on

7488-415: The result of several secondary causes including the shape of the sea, its depth, and other factors. Albert Einstein later expressed the opinion that Galileo developed his "fascinating arguments" and accepted them uncritically out of a desire for physical proof of the motion of the Earth. Galileo also dismissed the idea, known from antiquity and by his contemporary Johannes Kepler, that the Moon caused

7592-443: The sense of Holy Scripture". The Inquisition found that the idea of the Earth's movement "receives the same judgement in philosophy and ... in regard to theological truth, it is at least erroneous in faith". Pope Paul V instructed Cardinal Bellarmine to deliver this finding to Galileo, and to order him to abandon heliocentrism. On 26 February, Galileo was called to Bellarmine's residence and ordered "to abandon completely ...

7696-502: The smaller sizes were not small enough to answer Tycho's argument. Cardinal Bellarmine had written in 1615 that the Copernican system could not be defended without "a true physical demonstration that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun". Galileo considered his theory of the tides to provide such evidence. This theory was so important to him that he originally intended to call his Dialogue Concerning

7800-436: The star at his viewing point. In his Dialogue , he reported that he had found the apparent diameter of a star of first magnitude to be no more than 5 arcseconds , and that of one of sixth magnitude to be about / 6 arcseconds. Like most astronomers of his day, Galileo did not recognise that the apparent sizes of stars that he measured were spurious, caused by diffraction and atmospheric distortion, and did not represent

7904-422: The stars as they appeared to be much larger than the Sun. The essay also included four theological arguments, but Ingoli suggested Galileo focus on the physical and mathematical arguments, and he did not mention Galileo's biblical ideas. In February 1616, an Inquisitorial commission declared heliocentrism to be "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places

8008-492: The start of the sixties, the University of Pisa established the first Italian Chair of Film History and Criticism. In 1969, the degree course in Computer Science ( Informatics ) was set up. It was the first in Italy and followed the creation of the Pisan Electronic Calculator (CEP), designed in the mid-1950s and sponsored by Nobel Prize winner and graduate of the University of Pisa, Enrico Fermi , which

8112-628: The statutory autonomy of universities, forced the university to approve a new Statute, whose overall structure was only called into question with the so-called “ Gelmini reform ” in 2010. This led to the adoption of the 2012 Statute and the organizational layout which excluded the 11 Faculties in favour of 20 Departments. At present, the university is divided into 20 Departments, with around 150 first and second level degree courses, and single cycle degree courses, more than 20 doctoral courses, 50 schools of specialisation and more than 60 postgraduate courses. There are more than 1,500 members of teaching staff and

8216-715: The students are also foreign. Among the many graduates of the University of Pisa are Nobel laureates Giosuè Carducci , Enrico Fermi , and Carlo Rubbia , Fields Medal recipients Enrico Bombieri and Alessio Figalli , Presidents of the Republic Giovanni Gronchi and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi , film directors Mario Monicelli , Paolo Taviani , and Vittorio Taviani , writers Tiziano Terzani and Antonio Tabucchi , and tenor Andrea Bocelli . The University of Pisa consists of 20 departments. These departments offer several courses in their related field of study: PhD studies are usually offered and arranged by

8320-588: The study of comets had been proposed at the time by Tycho Brahe.) In its opening passage, Galileo and Guiducci's Discourse gratuitously insulted the Jesuit Christoph Scheiner , and various uncomplimentary remarks about the professors of the Collegio Romano were scattered throughout the work. The Jesuits were offended, and Grassi soon replied with a polemical tract of his own, The Astronomical and Philosophical Balance , under

8424-588: The surname "Galilei") derives from the Latin "Galilaeus", meaning "of Galilee ". The biblical roots of Galileo's name and surname were to become the subject of a famous pun. In 1614, during the Galileo affair , one of Galileo's opponents, the Dominican priest Tommaso Caccini , delivered against Galileo a controversial and influential sermon . In it he made a point of quoting Acts 1:11 : "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?". Despite being

8528-560: The suspected public ridicule lightly, nor the Copernican advocacy. Galileo had alienated one of his biggest and most powerful supporters, the Pope, and was called to Rome to defend his writings in September 1632. He finally arrived in February 1633 and was brought before inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani to be charged . Throughout his trial, Galileo steadfastly maintained that since 1616 he had faithfully kept his promise not to hold any of

8632-573: The telescope). His multiple interests included the study of astrology , which at the time was a discipline tied to the studies of mathematics, astronomy and medicine. Tycho Brahe and others had observed the supernova of 1572 . Ottavio Brenzoni's letter of 15 January 1605 to Galileo brought the 1572 supernova and the less bright nova of 1601 to Galileo's notice. Galileo observed and discussed Kepler's Supernova in 1604. Since these new stars displayed no detectable diurnal parallax , Galileo concluded that they were distant stars, and, therefore, disproved

8736-440: The telescope, and contrasted them to planets, which the telescope revealed to be discs. But shortly thereafter, in his Letters on Sunspots , he reported that the telescope revealed the shapes of both stars and planets to be "quite round". From that point forward, he continued to report that telescopes showed the roundness of stars, and that stars seen through the telescope measured a few seconds of arc in diameter. He also devised

8840-693: The tides in 1616, addressed to Cardinal Orsini . His theory gave the first insight into the importance of the shapes of ocean basins in the size and timing of tides; he correctly accounted, for instance, for the negligible tides halfway along the Adriatic Sea compared to those at the ends. As a general account of the cause of tides, however, his theory was a failure. If this theory were correct, there would be only one high tide per day. Galileo and his contemporaries were aware of this inadequacy because there are two daily high tides at Venice instead of one, about 12 hours apart. Galileo dismissed this anomaly as

8944-528: The tides—Galileo also took no interest in Kepler's elliptical orbits of the planets . Galileo continued to argue in favour of his theory of tides, considering it the ultimate proof of Earth's motion. In 1619, Galileo became embroiled in a controversy with Father Orazio Grassi , professor of mathematics at the Jesuit Collegio Romano . It began as a dispute over the nature of comets, but by

9048-573: The time Galileo had published The Assayer ( Il Saggiatore ) in 1623, his last salvo in the dispute, it had become a much wider controversy over the very nature of science itself. The title page of the book describes Galileo as a philosopher and "Matematico Primario" of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Because The Assayer contains such a wealth of Galileo's ideas on how science should be practised, it has been referred to as his scientific manifesto. Early in 1619, Father Grassi had anonymously published

9152-483: The time, surnames were optional in Italy, and his first name had the same origin as his sometimes-family name, Galilei. Both his given and family name ultimately derived from an ancestor, Galileo Bonaiuti , an important physician, professor, and politician in Florence in the 15th century. Galileo Bonaiuti was buried in the same church, the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence , where about 200 years later, Galileo Galilei

9256-520: The true sizes of stars. However, Galileo's values were much smaller than previous estimates of the apparent sizes of the brightest stars, such as those made by Brahe, and enabled Galileo to counter anti-Copernican arguments such as those made by Tycho that these stars would have to be absurdly large for their annual parallaxes to be undetectable. Other astronomers such as Simon Marius, Giovanni Battista Riccioli , and Martinus Hortensius made similar measurements of stars, and Marius and Riccioli concluded

9360-508: The university's prominent position at national level when it was placed among the ten universities totally funded by the state. Notwithstanding the aim to make Pisa a great “centre of university fascist culture” antifascist unrest was still alive, both in the academic community and among students. The application of racial laws , the first of which were signed by King Vittorio Emanuele III in 1938 at San Rossore , near Pisa, affected foreign and Italian students and university teachers severely, as

9464-929: The whole Pisa area, especially in the city centre. In politics and government, notable people who have attended the University of Pisa include Italian political leaders such as Giacomo Acerbo , Giuliano Amato , Sandro Bondi , Maria Chiara Carrozza , Carlo Azeglio Ciampi , Massimo D'Alema , Giovanni Gronchi , Guido Buffarini Guidi , Enrico Letta , Antonio Maccanico , Fabio Mussi , Alessandro Natta , Marcello Pera , Enrico Rossi , Carlo Sforza , Sidney Sonnino , and Paolo Emilio Taviani , Foreign political leaders such as Deputy Prime Minister of Albania Spiro Koleka , Ambassador Marcello Spatafora , Prime Ministers of Greece Ioannis Kolettis and Diomidis Kyriakos , Haitian President René Préval , Nicaraguan President Adan Cardenas , and Prime Minister of Somalia Ali Mohammed Ghedi . In theology, notable alumni include Archbishop Giovanni Battista Rinuccini , Cardinals Benedetto Accolti

9568-415: The world. Ghini was succeeded by the philosopher and scientist Andrea Cesalpino , who created the first scientific method for the classification of plants and can be considered the forerunner of the discovery of the cardiovascular system.   Cosimo I was still ruling when Galileo Galilei was born on 15 February 1564 in Pisa. Galileo Galilei is universally thought of as the founder of modern science and

9672-508: Was a Florentine astronomer , physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath . He was born in the city of Pisa , then part of the Duchy of Florence . Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy , modern-era classical physics, the scientific method , and modern science . Galileo studied speed and velocity , gravity and free fall , the principle of relativity , inertia , projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing

9776-419: Was a planet, but he did note its motion relative to the stars before losing track of it. Galileo made naked-eye and telescopic studies of sunspots . Their existence raised another difficulty with the unchanging perfection of the heavens as posited in orthodox Aristotelian celestial physics. An apparent annual variation in their trajectories, observed by Francesco Sizzi and others in 1612–1613, also provided

9880-483: Was able to lead the field in many areas of knowledge, adapting to the new demands of social, civil and economic life. The faculties of Economics and Business Studies (1948), and later Foreign Languages and Literature (1969) and Political Science (1970) joined the faculties present before the conflict – Engineering and Pharmacy –  and accompanied the arrival of the university for the masses (between 1961 and 1972 student numbers in Pisa went from around 9,000 to 27,000). At

9984-542: Was also buried. When he did refer to himself with more than one name, it was sometimes as Galileo Galilei Linceo, a reference to his being a member of the Accademia dei Lincei , an elite science organization founded in the Papal States . It was common for mid-16th century Tuscan families to name the eldest son after the parents' surname. Hence, Galileo Galilei was not necessarily named after his ancestor Galileo Bonaiuti. The Italian male given name "Galileo" (and thence

10088-416: Was also possible to place it entirely on the far side of the Sun, where it could exhibit only gibbous and full phases. After Galileo's telescopic observations of the crescent, gibbous and full phases of Venus, the Ptolemaic model became untenable. In the early 17th century, as a result of his discovery, the great majority of astronomers converted to one of the various geo-heliocentric planetary models, such as

10192-455: Was born and worked. He was one of the greatest mathematicians in history who, through his work, synthesized the spirit and processes of Greek geometry and the tools of Arabic mathematics for the first time in Europe. The papal seal “In Supremae dignitatis”, issued by Pope Clement VI on 3 September 1343, granted the Studium in Pisa the title of Studium Generale with various exclusive privileges, making it universally recognised. In medieval times,

10296-485: Was eight, his family moved to Florence , but he was left under the care of Muzio Tedaldi for two years. When Galileo was ten, he left Pisa to join his family in Florence, where he came under the tutelage of Jacopo Borghini. He was educated, particularly in logic, from 1575 to 1578 in the Vallombrosa Abbey , about 30 km southeast of Florence. Galileo tended to refer to himself only by his first name. At

10400-542: Was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that his opinions contradicted accepted Biblical interpretations. Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack and ridicule Pope Urban VIII , thus alienating both

10504-602: Was the basis for other firsts in Italy in its field. In 1986, for example, the first Italian link to the Internet originated in Pisa.   In 1967, the merger of the pre-existing colleges led to the creation of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and the Scuola Normale Superiore, forming a system of further education which is of the highest prestige at international level. Also in 1967, during

10608-494: Was the case throughout Italy. It was not until 2018, in Pisa, 80 years after the signature, that there was an official and public admission of responsibility on behalf of the Italian universities (on the University of Pisa's own initiative). The physical and moral destruction caused by the Second World War was soon overcome and the University of Pisa, whose matriculated students passed from 768 in 1945 to 1,292 in 1950,

10712-465: Was the religious life. Both girls were accepted by the convent of San Matteo in Arcetri and remained there for the rest of their lives. Virginia took the name Maria Celeste upon entering the convent. She died on 2 April 1634, and is buried with Galileo at the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence . Livia took the name Sister Arcangela and was ill for most of her life. Vincenzo was later legitimised as

10816-399: Was used to create an accurate timepiece. Up to this point, Galileo had deliberately been kept away from mathematics, since a physician earned a higher income than a mathematician. However, after accidentally attending a lecture on geometry, he talked his reluctant father into letting him study mathematics and natural philosophy instead of medicine. He created a thermoscope , a forerunner of

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