Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642).
Dialogo sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo, Tolemaico, e Copernicano.
Florence: Giovanni Batista Landini, 1632. (BRA0851)

One of the most significant books in the history of science, Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican resulted in his censure and imprisonment by the Inquisition in 1633. The controversy arose over Galileo’s proof of the Copernican cosmology, which placed the sun, not the Earth, at the center of the solar system. The engraved frontispiece depicts three great students of astronomy in dialogue: from left to right, Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Ptolemy (90–168 CE), and Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543). Ptolemy holds an armillary sphere with the Earth at its center, while Copernicus grasps a heliocentric model of the solar system.