Q 01/05

Which physicist was born on 8 January 1942, exactly 300 years after Galileo died?

A) Roger Penrose

B) Carl Sagan

C) Stephen Hawking

D) Kip Thorne

Answer · why

C) Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking counted Galileo among his inspirations, and his official biography calls the dates a fitting symmetry. In 1981 he first set out his id...

Q 02/05

Galileo's father Vincenzo was a leading figure in which field?

A) Architecture

B) Banking

C) Music

D) Painting

Answer · why

C) Music

Music: Vincenzo Galilei was a court musician and theorist who put the old rules of harmony to the test, experimenting on how a string's tension change...

Q 03/05

At his father's urging, Galileo enrolled at the University of Pisa to study what?

A) Law

B) Medicine

C) Theology

D) Mathematics

Answer · why

B) Medicine

Medicine was his father's choice, made after calling the boy home from a monastery where he was thinking of becoming a monk. It never held him: after ...

Q 04/05

In the famous story of the swinging cathedral lamp, the student Galileo timed its swings against what?

A) A water clock

B) A burning candle

C) A sandglass

D) His own heartbeat

Answer · why

D) His own heartbeat

His own heartbeat, as the story goes: wide swings and narrow ones seemed to take the same time. Doubters point out that the lamp shown to visitors tod...

Q 05/05

In the traditional story, what chance event drew the young Galileo away from his university course?

A) Reading a book by Copernicus

B) Meeting Kepler

C) Watching a lunar eclipse

D) Attending a geometry lecture

Answer · why

D) Attending a geometry lecture

Attending a geometry lecture by Ostilio Ricci, a court tutor in Florence, is the usual account. Galileo then brought Ricci home to help talk his reluc...