Galileo' s missing fingers found
- Source: Global Times
- [12:48 November 24 2009]
- Comments
Galileo's missing fingers are inside a glass vase.
Three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei' s corpse nearly 300 years ago in a Florence have been found again and will soon be put on display, Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of the History of Science said on November 20.
The body parts were cut off from the astronomer's body by his fans in 1737, 95 years after his death, when his remains were being moved from a temporary monument to his final resting place in Florence, Italy.
However, the tooth and two of the fingers from the scientist's right hand – the thumb and middle finger, were kept by one of the admirers and later put in a sealed glass jar which was passed down in the family.
However sometime after 1905, the jar disappeared until it recently turned up at auction and was purchased by a private collector.
"There is a description from 1905 by the last person to have seen these objects. It provides us with a very detailed description of the container and the contents inside," Galluzzi explained.
Since 1927 the museum has had the third finger, and the vertebra has been kept at the University of Padua, where Galileo had taught for years, Galluzzi said.
The museum will put the fingers and tooth on public display next spring.
Galileo Galilei has been called "the Father of Modern Science." He died in 1642, was condemned by the Vatican for insisting that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The church at the time believed the Earth was the center of the universe.
