Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, on the 15th of February 1564, he died on the 8th of January 1642.

Galileo was a ground breaking astronomer, physicist, mathematician, philosopher and inventor. Among his inventions were telescopes, a compass and a thermometer.

Galileo enrolled to do a medical degree at the University of Pisa but never finished, instead choosing to study mathematics.

Galileo was the person who invented the telescope - or was he?

Galileo built on the work of others to create a telescope with around 3x magnification, he later improved on this to make telescopes with around 30x magnification.

He didn’t actually invent the telescope, he got the idea

from a Dutch glasses maker who had invented a spyglass.

He was the first to use a telescope to formally observe

the sky, though.

Here is a picture of Galileo and one of his telescopes.