26 GREAT MEN OF SCIENCE 



skill with the lute. He also showed much talent for drawing 

 and painting, but was obliged at the wish of his parents to 

 study medicine, for which purpose he entered the University 

 of Pisa at seventeen years of age. There the teaching was 

 chiefly based upon Aristotle, and Galileo found it of ex- 

 tremely little value, as appears from his later writings. This 

 seems to have aroused in him a general objection to the study 

 of ancient authors, for in spite of the advice of his father, he 

 only determined quite late, in his twentieth year, to study 

 Euclid. But only this start was needed to show him how to 

 use the most fundamental gifts which he possessed. Euclid, 

 and soon also Archimedes, then engaged his entire attention. 



There can be no doubt that Euclid led him to a clear view 

 of the nature of all strict science, and the impression pro- 

 duced upon him by the works of Archimedes was very 

 powerful. 'Only too clearly,' he says himself at the com- 

 mencement of his earliest essay, *do we see from these works 

 how greatly all other minds are inferior to Archimedes, and 

 how little hope anyone can have of inventing anything 

 approaching his creations.' Also, his own first appearance 

 in literature is connected with Archimedes; he produced two 

 studies on floating bodies and the centre of gravity, which 

 were at first circulated in manuscript, and only later printed. 

 At that time he was making numerous determinations of 

 specific gravity by determining the weight of bodies im- 

 mersed in liquids. 



He does not appear to have arrived at a regular termina- 

 tion of his study in Pisa, but his well-wishers recognised his 

 unusual abilities, and obtained for him the possibility of 

 earning his living in Florence by giving mathematical in- 

 struction; ultimately he was given, at the age of twenty-five, 

 a professorship of mathematics at Pisa. Here he began to 

 concern himself with the problems of motion, by the solu- 

 tion of which he later showed his greatness. But success 

 did not by any means come to him very quickly in this work; 



