15th February each year is Galileo Day - a celebration of the anniversary of Italian Galileo Galilei's birth in 1564. He died on 8th January 1642. He was a physicist, a mathematician, an astronomer and a philosopher. Galileo was best known for his work supporting Copernicanism, showing the Earth was in fact not at the centre of the universe. He was the scientist who first saw the craters of the Moon, the moons of Jupiter, and the phases of Venus. His discoveries shook the world and proved that the planets orbit the Sun!
Galileo was a truly inspirational scientist. Like Darwin, the ideas he put forward, though correct, were met with large amounts of controversy and resistance from the Church. However, he stuck to the scientific method and followed the conclusions the evidence led to. He built on what Nicolaus Copernicus (born 19th February, 1473) believed and went on to prove him correct. It will be Copernicus Day on the 19th February.
The library has many books about astronomy, but these are about Galileo in particular:
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