Of those who did so much but are remembered only for a fraction of their achievments the one who stnds out is Galileo.

Galileo’s most famous invention was the telescope. With this telescope, he was able to look at the moon, discover the four satellites of Jupiter, observe a supernova, verify the phases of Venus, and discover sunspots. His discoveries proved the Copernican system which states that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun. Galileo's belief in the Copernican System eventually got him into trouble with the Catholic Church.

The Inquisition was a permanent institution in the Catholic Church charged with the eradication of heresies. A committee of consultants declared to the Inquisition that the Copernican proposition that the Sun is the center of the universe was a heresy. In 1624, Galileo was assured by Pope Urban VIII that he could write about Copernican theory as long as he treated it just as a mathematical proposition. However, with the printing of Galileo's book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was called to Rome in 1633 to face the Inquisition.

Galileo was found guilty of heresy and was sent to his home near Florence where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life. By that time he was totally blind. In 1642, Galileo died at his home outside Florence.

Galileo, born in Pisa on February 15, 1564 began studying at the University of Pisa. While at the University of Pisa, Galileo began his study of the pendulum. In 1602 Galileo made his most notable discovery about the pendulum - the period (the time in which a pendulum swings back and forth) does not depend on the arc of the swing (the isochronism). Eventually, this discovery would lead to the development of his idea for a pendulum clock. At the University of Pisa, Galileo learned the physics of the Ancient Greek scientist, Aristotle. However, Galileo questioned the Aristotelian approach to physics. Aristotelians believed that heavier objects fall faster through a medium than lighter ones. Galileo eventually disproved this idea by asserting that all objects, regardless of their density, fall at the same rate in a vacuum. In 1592, Galileo was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Padua. While teaching there, he frequently visited a place called the Arsenal, where Venetian ships were docked and loaded. Naturally, during his visits to the Arsenal, he became fascinated by nautical technologies, such as the sector and shipbuilding. In 1593, he was presented with the problem involving the placement of oars in galleys. He treated the oar as a lever and correctly made the water the fulcrum. A year later, he patented a model for a pump. His pump was a device that raised water by using only one horse. In 1610, Galileo moved from Padua to Florence where he took a position at the Court of the Medici family. Galileo invented many mechanical devices other than the pump, such as the hydrostatic balance.