The Saints of Science: Galileo Galilei

On the blog Faith & Reason, Benjamin Soloway wonders aloud if science can have saints.  In his museum of Florence, Italy the relics of Galileo bring visitors from all around.  People come to see and be near what remains of this scientific icon.  Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Galileo Museum, calls the deeply-Catholic and intriguing scientist a secular saint.  

Galileo stands at the center of the science and religion debate.  While devout, he understood the world and the nature of the universe through science.  Known as the "Father of Modern Science", he disproved Aristotle by showing that two objects will fall at the same rate in a vacuum regardless of their mass.  He studied the production of pitch as he slide a chisel along a rough surface at different speeds.  He even developed a basic understanding of the Theory of Relativity.  He built better and more powerful microscopes to explore the heavens, discovering the major moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus and Sun Spots. With these observations, he became an advocate for heliocentrism which removed Earth from the center of the solar system as it orbited around the Sun.  That revelation led the Catholic Church to convict him as a heretic, placed him under house arrest, and forced him to publicly deny the heliocentric model.

I will agree with Paolo Galluzzi and declare Galileo Galilei the first Saint of Science.  In the Catholic tradition, Saints lived a deeply religious life.  Our Saints of Science will have contributed fundamental ideas to the scientific community and our understanding of nature.  You will know some of the saints (Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, etc), while others you may not.  Every so often I will write a short blurb about a great scientist who I would consider of of the Saints of Science.