Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa on February 15th, 1564: he was world-renown mathematician, astronomer and physicist. When he was only 17 years old, he enrolled at the University to study medicine, philosophy and mathematics. His essay described the hydrostatic balance and treatise on the centre of gravity in solids; it won him the post of mathematics lecturer at the university in 1589.

For three years he explored in even greater depth his ideas on falling bodies, which led to his discovery of the laws of gravity and the isochronism of the oscillations of the pendulum.

In 1609 he modified and improved the recently invented telescope to enable him to observe the sky and, the following year, to discover four of Jupiter's largest satellites, the spots on the sun, the phases of Venus, and the geography of the moon's centricity.

The Inquisition condemned his theories as a contradiction of the Holy Scriptures.

The Galileo's sentence of imprisonment was commuted by the Pope Urban VIII into house arrest and reclusion near Florence, where he remained for his last eight years, until his death on 8 January 1642.

Galileo's enormous contribution to the sciences prompted the creation of a new scientific academy, the so-called Accademia del Cimento, where the first experiments in pharmaceutics were performed; and in 1591 a Natural History Museum, the Museo di Storia Naturale.