Long before Galileo Galilei ever thought of pointing the new-fangled invention of the telescope to the night sky, he had a big problem. He needed to get a job.
The year was 1588 and the 24-year-old was seeking to establish himself as a mathematician. Early in the year, he had applied to be the chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna but was rejected. He then set his sights on obtaining an appointment to the University of Pisa, but had to impress an influential committee who could make or break the future for his proposed career.
That group was a literary society. The members of the Florentine Academy had the ability to influence the University of Pisa's hiring of academics and they asked Galileo to deliver two lectures on the geometry of the underworld described in Dante Alighieri's epic poem, The Divine Comedy.
Between these lectures and the publication of a manuscript with theorems he had developed on centers of gravity, Galileo impressed the people he needed and secured a position as chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa. In Gresham College's 2025 Provost Lecture, mathematics professor Sarah Hart explored how several of Galileo's deductions derived from his mathematical analysis of Dante's literary work influenced his later research. The following video presents several remarkable examples of Galileo's creative outside-the-box-thinking that resulted from his taking on the challenge:
There are many lessons here about the value of boundary crossing interdisciplinary research. Hart's lecture also provides a great overview to how Galileo's creative endeavor affected later work in the arts and sciences. Like the examples of fractal patterns she includes near the end of the lecture, there's a seemingly infinite number of rabbit holes to go down to see where they lead.
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