What was Galileo role in scientific revolution?

Answer 1

Galileo Galilei was an Italian Astronomer, and scientist from 1564 to 1642.

His greatest achievements were applications with early telescopes and astronomy. In particular, he was the first to identify three of Jupiter's moons.

He used "science" to determine that the planets in our solar system orbited around the sun, and that some of them had their own moons which orbited them.

Presumably Greeks, Romans, and Mayans had also come to the same conclusions (except for Jupiter's Moons), but this knowledge had been lost in the middle ages.

The Catholic Church firmly held that the Earth was the center of the universe and all planets orbited around the earth, and would not accept the idea that other planets could have moons.

In 1633 Galileo was put on trial for Heresy, and in the end, in a dark day for science, Galileo recanted his findings and accepted the church's doctrine.

However, perhaps more than anything he planted the seed that the church was not all-knowing, and that new theories could be formed about the universe and the earth through scientific observation.

There is an excellent article about Galileo on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei