Earlier philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, had concerned themselves with pinning down the causes of motion. Galileo dropped all Aristotelian talk of why things moved and focused instead on ...

Facing the Inquisition for his scientific beliefs, Galileo developed many important ideas about the science of motion, such as inertia. Isaac Newton built on many of Galileo's insights when ...

Today, the simple laws of motion as defined by Isaac Newton, for example, are known to the most modest students, yet Galileo spent his life unravelling these mysteries. His many discoveries ...

Despite what frequent Venice visitor Galileo Galilei thought, tides are indeed related to the motion of the moon (and to a lesser extent, the sun).* Two oceanic bulges—one on the side of the ...

The celebrated English scientist Sir Isaac Newton was born on January 4, 1643, in a small village in England named ...

They also shared an unquenchable curiosity. For Galileo, it was the motion of celestial bodies; for Hawking, the origins of the cosmos. Both dared to ask the biggest questions, reflecting a ...