Famous Men of Science. Sarah K. Bolton
John Kepler, saying: "Many years ago I became a convert to the opinions of Copernicus, and by that theory have succeeded in fully explaining many phenomena which on the contrary hypothesis are altogether inexplicable. I have drawn up many arguments and compilations of the opposite opinions, which, however, I have not hitherto dared to publish, fearful of meeting the same fate as our master Copernicus, who, although he has earned for himself immortal fame amongst the few, yet amongst the greater number appears as only worthy of hooting and derision; so great is the number of fools."
John Kepler, like Galileo, lived a pathetic life. His childhood was spent in the little beer-shop of his wretchedly poor father. At six he had a severe attack of small-pox, and his eyes were permanently weakened. He was put to the plough, but his delicate body could not bear the work. At last, through charity, he became a theological student at Tübingen. But here he began to think for himself, and, probably, would have been obliged to leave the university.
Fortunately for science, he heard some lectures given by Michael Möstlen, famous in mathematics and astronomy. A new world opened to Kepler. He applied himself with all the ardor of youth, and at twenty-two became professor of mathematics at Grätz, in Styria. He was soon driven away from this Catholic stronghold, on account of his Protestant faith. Tycho Brahe heard of his needs, and made him his assistant at Prague, with a salary of seven hundred and fifty dollars a year. This seemed regal splendor to the poor astronomer. Now he studied the heavens with hope and delight.
But sorrows soon came. His children died, his wife became insane, and died also. The salary could not be paid, on account of the religious wars which convulsed Germany. He wrote almanacs, took private pupils, and in all ways tried to support his second wife and children, while he studied the heavens year by year, discovering his three great laws. The mathematical calculations for the first law, that the planets move in elliptical orbits round the sun, which is placed at one of the foci, filled seven hundred pages. His "Harmonies of the World" contained his third great law: "The squares of the periodic times of the planets are proportioned to the cubes of their mean distances from the sun."
Such was his joy when he discovered this law, after seventeen years of labor, that he said, "I have written my book. It will be read; whether in the present age or by posterity matters little. It can wait for its readers. Has not God waited six thousand years for one to contemplate his works?" In a last fruitless attempt to recover twenty-nine thousand florins, owed him by the government, worn out with want and disappointment, he fell ill and died at Ratisbon, leaving thirty-three works, twenty-two volumes in manuscript, and his family in the direst poverty. Such was the man who admired Galileo in his youth, and who stands with him in the admiration of the generations that have come and gone since these two men lived and wrote and suffered.
At Padua, Galileo soon attracted great numbers to his class-room. Often a thousand gathered to hear his lectures, and when the hall was too cramped, he spoke to the people in the open air. He was above the middle height, well proportioned, with cheerful countenance, witty in conversation, and enthusiastic in his manner. So learned that he could repeat by heart much of the works of Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Seneca; he was yet modest and unassuming, saying that he never met a man so ignorant but that something might be learned from him.
He labored incessantly. He wrote treatises on Fortifications, on Mechanics, on Gnomonics, on the laws of motion, on the celestial globe, which were copied by his pupils, and sent by them far and wide over Europe. He took a workman into his family, and began to superintend the making of the compass which he had invented, and the thermoscope, or heat indicator, which led in later years to the thermometer. His experiment was made by a "glass bottle about the size of a hen's egg, the neck of which was two palms long, and as narrow as a straw. Having well heated the bulb in his hands, he placed its mouth in a vessel containing a little water, and withdrawing the heat of his hand from the bulb, instantly the water rose in the neck, more than a palm above the level of the water in the vessel."
During the first six years at Padua, his salary rose from about one hundred dollars to five hundred dollars, yearly. All this time, when his mind should have been free from care for his great work, he was beset with difficulties. His sister, Virginia, had married before his father's death, but a promised dowry had never been paid, and now the brother-in-law demanded the payment. The mother, worried over the prospect, wrote to her son, Galileo, "If you carry into effect your intention of coming here next month, I shall be rejoiced, only you must not come unprovided with funds, for I see that Benedetto is determined to have his own, that is to say, what you promised him; and he threatens loudly that he will have you arrested the instant you arrive here. And as I hear you bound yourself to pay, he would have the power to arrest you, and he is just the man to do it. So I warn you, for it would grieve me much if anything of the kind were to happen."
Livia, another sister, had become engaged to a Pisan gentleman, with the promise of a dowry of eighteen hundred ducats, eight hundred of which must be paid down. The "Pisan gentleman" could not burden himself with a wife, without funds to help support her and himself. So Galileo generously, if not wisely, borrowed six hundred ducats, and paid the necessary eight hundred, giving his sister beautiful clothes and house furnishings.
Besides these sisters, Galileo had a lazy brother to provide for, Michelangelo, a young man of some musical talent and elegant manners, with the not unusual gift of being able to spend much and earn little. Galileo obtained a situation for him with a Polish prince, and spent two hundred crowns in getting him ready for the new position. He went thither, but soon returned, and another place had to be procured for him, at the court of the Duke of Bavaria.
While there, instead of helping to pay his sister's dowry, as he had promised, he married; had an extravagant wedding feast, and then wrote his hard-working brother: "I know that you will say that I should have waited, and thought of our sisters before taking a wife. But, good heavens! the idea of toiling all one's life just to put by a few farthings to give one's sisters! This yoke would be indeed too heavy and bitter; for I am more than certain that in thirty years I should not have saved enough to cover this debt."
With all the pressure upon him for money, Galileo kept steadily on in his absorbing studies. In the year 1609, he constructed a telescope. It is true that Hans Lipperhey, of Germany, had invented a spy-glass, and presented it to Prince Maurice, so that the principle was understood; but nobody gave it practical illustration till Galileo, having heard of the glass, began to reflect how an instrument could be made to bring distant objects near. In a leaden tube, he fixed two glasses, both having one side flat, and the other side of the one concave, and the other convex. By this, objects appeared three times nearer and nine times larger. A few days later, he hastened with his leaden tube to Venice, to exhibit it to the Doge and the Senate. He wrote to a friend: —
"Many gentlemen and senators, even the oldest, have ascended at various times the highest bell-towers in Venice, to spy out ships at sea, making sail for the mouth of the harbor, and have seen them clearly, though without my telescope they would have been invisible for more than two hours. The effect of this instrument is to show an object at a distance of, say, fifty miles, as if it were but five miles off.
"Perceiving of what great utility such an instrument would prove in naval and military operations, and seeing that His Serenity greatly desired to possess it, I resolved four days ago to go to the palace and present it to the Doge as a free gift. And on quitting the presence-chamber, I was commanded to bide awhile in the hall of the senate, whereunto, after a little, the Illustrissimo Prioli, who is Procurator and one of the Riformatori of the University, came forth to me from the presence-chamber, and, taking me by the hand, said, 'that the senate, knowing the manner in which I had served it for seventeen years at Padua, and being sensible of my courtesy in making it a present of my telescope, had immediately ordered the Illustrious Riformatori to elect me (with my good-will) to the professorship for life, with a stipend of one thousand florins yearly.'"
This must have been a comfort to the now famous Galileo, as it was, doubtless, to the useless Michelangelo, and the two brothers-in-law! He could now live in comparative peace and rest.
On his return to Padua, he began eagerly to study the heavens. He found that the surface of the moon was mountainous; that the Milky Way was composed of an immense number of small stars and nebulous matter; that Orion, instead of being made up of seven heavenly bodies, had over five hundred stars; and that the