Galileo Galilei
06-08-2010, 02:36 PM
Galileo's lost tooth, fingers go on show in Florence
The body parts, along with another finger and a vertebrae, were cut from Galileo's corpse by scientists and historians during a burial ceremony 95 years after his death.
"The laymen and masons that were attending the ceremony thought that they should have some souvenir of Galileo's body," Paolo Galluzzi, director of Florence's Galileo Museum, told Reuters in an interview.
"They thought that having a piece of the man would have been a homage to his tradition. The idea of having relics of science is very similar, is a mirror of the relics of religion," he said.
The remains, along with two telescopes, a compass and a wealth of other instruments designed by Galileo, are the main attraction at the refurbished -- and renamed -- Galileo Museum, which reopens on June 10 after two years of renovation work.
While one of Galileo's fingers and the vertebrae had been conserved in Florence and Padua since 1737, the other finger, the thumb and the tooth had passed from one collector to another until they went missing in 1905.
MORE:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65735G20100608
American Tourists: Please Stop Pointing at Galileo’s Finger!
American tourists have a habit of pointing at Galileo's fingers after two of the famous astronomer's appendages were removed from his corpse in the 18th century and have gone on display in a Florence museum for all smiley Americans to witness.
“Dude, where’s his finger,” said one American entering the Florence museum, according to a Florence newspaper. “Wait a second. I just got a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.”
Galileo’s fingers are so popular the museum renamed itself The Galileo Museum after the famous astronomer from The Museum of the History of Science.
MORE:
http://politicallyillustrated.com/index.php?/page/world/1387/
The body parts, along with another finger and a vertebrae, were cut from Galileo's corpse by scientists and historians during a burial ceremony 95 years after his death.
"The laymen and masons that were attending the ceremony thought that they should have some souvenir of Galileo's body," Paolo Galluzzi, director of Florence's Galileo Museum, told Reuters in an interview.
"They thought that having a piece of the man would have been a homage to his tradition. The idea of having relics of science is very similar, is a mirror of the relics of religion," he said.
The remains, along with two telescopes, a compass and a wealth of other instruments designed by Galileo, are the main attraction at the refurbished -- and renamed -- Galileo Museum, which reopens on June 10 after two years of renovation work.
While one of Galileo's fingers and the vertebrae had been conserved in Florence and Padua since 1737, the other finger, the thumb and the tooth had passed from one collector to another until they went missing in 1905.
MORE:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65735G20100608
American Tourists: Please Stop Pointing at Galileo’s Finger!
American tourists have a habit of pointing at Galileo's fingers after two of the famous astronomer's appendages were removed from his corpse in the 18th century and have gone on display in a Florence museum for all smiley Americans to witness.
“Dude, where’s his finger,” said one American entering the Florence museum, according to a Florence newspaper. “Wait a second. I just got a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.”
Galileo’s fingers are so popular the museum renamed itself The Galileo Museum after the famous astronomer from The Museum of the History of Science.
MORE:
http://politicallyillustrated.com/index.php?/page/world/1387/