Galileo Galilei

GALILEO GALILEI (1564–1642), a brilliant scientist and the founder of mechanics as the science of motion, was born in the city of Pisa (Italy). In the field of exact sciences, he became famous for discovering the laws of the pendulum and the free fall of bodies, and for inventing the spyglass and the telescope. Using the latter, Galileo was the first to see the mountains on the Moon, sunspots, and the satellites of Jupiter. He calculated the period of the Sun's rotation around its axis and the period of revolution of Jupiter's satellites around the latter. Galileo was a prominent proponent of the Copernican system. For medicine, Galileo is of interest in that he attempted to apply the laws of mechanics he discovered to human labor and to provide an explanation for the phenomena of fatigue. He believed that lifting causes fatigue because it contradicts "natural laws," according to which bodies must tend downward. Muscles, according to Galileo, become fatigued because they move not only their own weight, but also the weight of the skeleton and the entire body. The heart, which sets only its own mass in motion, is tireless. Despite their lack of foundation, Galileo's views are of interest as the first attempt to explain the phenomena of fatigue, which remain unsolved to this day.