Unhappy with his arrangement at University of Padua, Galileo managed to strike a new deal in 1610 whereby he became “Chief Mathematician of the University of Pisa and Philosopher and Mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany”. The appointment was for life and he wasn’t obligated to teach at the university. He also wasn’t required to reside in Pisa, which allowed him to finally return to his beloved Florence.
In 1599, Galileo acquired a large house with a garden and vineyard. Here he housed students who stayed with him for extended periods (along with their servants), and maintained a workshop (complete with a coppersmith) for the manufacture of instruments. The private lessons he gave along with his university courses kept Galileo very busy.
“It is important to realize in physics today, that we have no knowledge of what energy is … It is an abstract thing in that it does not tell us the mechanism or the reasons …”
-Feynman
In 1905, Einstein said light is a particle (photon) with energy proportional to its frequency. Although photon momentum was known much earlier to Einstein, he waited until 1916 to finally declare it.
Galileo’s natural music ability helped him measure time in his experiments with the inclined plane.
Einstein predicted a new phase transition for matter (Bose-Einstein Condensation) in 1925; it took until 1995 to verify it experimentally.
Einstein predicted stimulated emission can occur when light and matter interact; this idea forms the basis of the modern laser.
By the end of the eighteenth century, heat along with its cohorts light, magnetism and electricity were regarded as an imponderable fluid capable of flowing between the spaces assumed to be present in matter.
Despite the various subatomic particles comprising an atom, only its outermost electrons are involved in chemical reactions.
“The great initial success of the quantum theory cannot convert me to believe in that fundamental game of dice.” –Einstein (1944)
