Galileo Galilei Biography
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Galileo Galilei was the eldest son of Vincenzo Galilei. He was born on 15 February 1564 in Pisa, Tuscany. Galileo's father was a musician. In the early half of 1570s, Galileo's family relocated to Florence. While he was in his teens, Galileo went to a monastery school located in Vallombrosa, close to Florence; and in 1581, he finished his high school from the University of Pisa, where he had enrolled to study medicine. However, Galileo love was mathematics, and he decided to pursue it against his father's wishes.
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In 1585, Galileo left his studies without getting a university degree. He earned his money by giving private tuitions in math-related subjects in Florence and Siena. It was during this time that Galileo designed a hydrostatic balance for weighing small quantities and also wrote a treatise called La Bilancetta. He graduated to study motion, and continued this sphere of research for the next 20 years. In the year 1588, Galileo put his application for the chair of math at the University of Bologna. However, he did not get the position. Nonetheless, his reputation was growing by leaps and bounds, and he was asked to give 2 lectures at the Florentine Academy on Dante's work, Inferno. He gave such a good lecture on the shape, location and dimension of Dante's work that within a year, he was offered a 3-year long contract with the University of Pisa.
When Galileo started teaching at the University, there was an ongoing debate about Aristotlte's laws of nature that objects that were heavier fell faster than objects that were lighter. Aristotle's laws were accepted as truth and no one had bothered to conduct an experiment to check their veracity. So, Galileo decided to take it upon himself to check the truth. It is claimed that he used to drop objects from the Tower of Pisa and found that though these objects had different sizes and weights, they all reached the ground at the same time. With this experiment, he managed to prove Aristotle wrong. More...
Jane Goodall Biography
Jane Goodall is a well-known figure in the world of primates. She is a primatologist and has been studying chimpanzees in the wild for decades. Her studies have helped the scientific community understand the social groups of chimpanzees and how individual chimps behave.
She was born on 3 April 1934 to Mortimer Herbert Morris-Goodall and Vanna in London, England. Her father was an engineer, while her mother was a novelist. She was around 2 years old, when her mother presented her with a stuffed chimpanzee and this got her interested in animals. While Jane was a good student, she preferred to spend time outdoors and learn about animals. By the time Jane was around 10 years old, she was already dreaming of spending her time in Africa living among animals.
After finishing high school at the age of 18, Jane began to work. She initially worked as a secretary, then as an assistant editor at a film studio and finally as a waitress. Her sole aim was to save up money for her trip to Africa. She was 23 years old when she finally got a chance to go to Africa. She reached Mombasa and met Louis Leakey, More...
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