Who is the father of science?

The title "Father of Science," particularly "Father of Modern Science," is most widely and deservedly attributed to the Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). While science as a practice of observing the natural world has roots stretching back to thinkers like Aristotle, Galileo's work in the 16th and 17th centuries represented a radical and definitive break from ancient tradition.

He championed a new way of doing science, one based on empirical observation, systematic experimentation, and mathematical analysis, which collectively form the bedrock of the modern scientific method. His relentless pursuit of evidence, even when it contradicted established doctrine, fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Galileo's most famous contributions came from turning his newly improved telescope to the heavens. His observations were revolutionary. He discovered that the Moon was not a perfect, smooth celestial sphere as believed, but was covered in mountains and craters, similar to the Earth. He discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter (now called the Galilean moons), proving that not everything in the heavens orbited the Earth.

He observed the phases of Venus, which showed that it orbited the Sun, not the Earth. These observations provided the first direct, observational evidence supporting the heliocentric model of the universe proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus, which placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the solar system. This was a direct challenge to the geocentric model of Ptolemy and the Catholic Church, a brave and dangerous stance to take.

Equally important were his contributions to physics on Earth. He is credited with establishing the law of falling bodies, demonstrating through experimentation (famously, though perhaps apocryphally, by dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa) that objects of different masses fall at the same rate in a vacuum.

He formulated the principle of inertia, which later became Newton's First Law of Motion. What made Galileo the "Father of Science" was not just his discoveries, but his method. He did not rely on pure philosophical reasoning as the ancients had. Instead, he designed experiments, collected data, and used mathematics to describe the laws of nature. His insistence that the "book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" was a pivotal moment in intellectual history.

His famous and tragic conflict with the Catholic Church, which led to his trial and house arrest for heresy, symbolizes the historic struggle of rational, evidence-based inquiry against entrenched dogma. By championing empiricism and mathematical analysis, Galileo Galilei forged the tools and set the standards for all future scientific exploration.