Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the

lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. Galileo Galilei stands as one of the

most significant figures in the history of science and thought. But how did he gain such an

illustrious reputation?

In this Life of the Week episode, James Hannam tells Danny Bird about Galileo's pioneering

observations, experiments and the disseminations of his discoveries, which dared to provoke

the orthodoxies of his day and threatened his own liberty.

James, thank you very much for joining me to discuss the life of Galileo as part of our Life

of the Week podcast series. And so let's begin right at the beginning and ask who was Galileo?

And is it possible to sum him up in a few words? Galileo was a very important scientist during a period which is often called the scientific revolution,

who, as well as making scientific breakthroughs of his own, was also one of the great first

popularizers of science. He thought that

science was something that everybody wanted to know about, and he really tried to get the word out

to the general public about the exciting discoveries that were being made at the time, especially

in astronomy. But unfortunately, because he was, to some extent, really quite publicity,

Hungary, that also got into some trouble with the authorities of the time a great deal of trouble

in the case of the Catholic Church because he was pushing what was at the time a highly controversial

theory that the earth goes around the sun rather than the sun going around

the earth. And that was something that the Catholic Church at the time strongly objected to.

And where and when was he born? What kind of world did he grow up in? I think we'd say that

Galileo was born into quite a bourgeois middle class background. He was born in the city of Pisa in

Tuscany, but his family moved to Florence when he was quite young. And those are both very rich in

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