Galileo: The Church made him pay for his inconvenient Truth

His full name was Galileo Galilei and he was an Italian physicist and astronomer whose observations and discoveries laid the ground work for future brilliant minds such as Issac Newton to build upon and who in history represents a symbol of victory for scientific inquiry over the forces of ignorance in pursuit of the truth.
He was born near Pisa on February 15th 1564. He was taught by monks in his early life and entered the University of Pisa in 1581 with the intent to study medicine. His attention however soon turned to philosophy and mathematics instead and he left the university after 4 years without a degree. By 1589 he became a professor of mathematics and he fell into disfavor quickly by having disproven a long held belief of Aristotle's that objects fall at different speeds based on weight. He dropped two items of different weight from the Leaning Tower of Piza and proved that objects all fall at the same speed. This challenge to Aristotle caused him problems at Piza with other professors who taught there and so his contract with the university was not renewed in 1592.
He moved on to teach at the University of Padua and while there he invented a calculating "compass" for the solution of mathematical problems. He also among other things discovered the law of falling bodies and investigated mechanics and how parts function.
In 1609 he built the first telescope. This invention proved valuable for naval and maritime operations and was a great success for him and his reputation. He turned a more powerful version of his original invention toward the stars and was the first to discover that there were craters on the moon and also spotted the 4 largest satellites of Jupiter.
He fell into his most serious trouble with the Roman Catholic Church which had long preached the supposed divinely aquired knowledge that the earth was the center of our universe as fact. Galileo discovered through telescopic observation that it was in fact not the case and it was actually the Sun that was at the center. When he published these findings and in the years after he became scorned by both the church and his contemporaries. By 1616 he was being denounced openly as a heretic by priests from their pulpits and his writings were subject to censorship. In response to this he fell silent and remained so for years in reaction to warnings from various members of the Roman catholic Church.
In 1632 the controversy flared up again when he was called to Rome to stand trial for suspicion of heresy for publishing a new book in which he again discussed the Capernican Hypotheses in relation to the physics of tides. This work supported the theory that the earth is not the center of the universe.
The result of the trial was that he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The sentence was quickly commuted to house arrest for life and his writings were ordered burned.
Galileo lived for 9 more years after the trial in a state of house arrest and was struck by blindness in the years before his death on January 8 1642 at the age of 77. In the years after his death his controversial discovery gained more prominance and through the observations of those who followed after him became reconfirmed as fact and as more time passed it gained acceptance for the truth that it was among both members of the church and the masses.