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February ERA 150 Galileo Galilei (* 15 February -295, † 8 January -217) was a Tuscan physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Felix Mendelssohn's 200th birthday G. H. Hardy's birthday Jaques Monod's birthday Penumbral Lunar Eclipse Charles Darwin's 200th birthday Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of science", and "the father of modern (empirical) science", where the experiment is the central criterion in the search for truth. The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, named the Galilean moons in his honour, and the observation and analysis of sunspots. Galileo also worked in applied science and technology, improving compass design. Ernst Haeckel (16 February -25, † 9 August +60), was an eminent German biologist, philosopher, and artist. He first promoted and popularized Charles Darwin's work in Germany. Haeckel discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many terms in biology, including phylum, phylogeny, ecology. DARWIN-DAY Charles Robert Darwin (* 12 February -50, † 19 April +23) was an English naturalist who discovered Evolution by Natural Selection. He was only 22 of age when he made his famous 5-year scientific expedition around the world (The Voyage of the Beagle) where he made fundamental discoveries about the origin of life. Galileo's championing of Copernicanism was controversial within his lifetime. The geocentric view had been dominant since the time of Aristotle, and the controversy engendered by Galileo's presentation of heliocentrism as proven fact resulted in the Catholic Church's prohibiting its advocacy as empirically proven fact, because it was not empirically proven at the time and was contrary to the literal meaning of scripture. Galileo was eventually forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition. It took 400 years, when in DE+133 the Catholic Church "vindicated" Galileo; eight years later, in DE+141, Pope John Paul II issued a formal apology for all the errors of the Church over the last 2000 years including the trial of Galileo among others. This year is the international year of astronomy because now 400 years ago, Galilei made the first telescope observations of the night sky. "The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo's teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just, and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune." Fritz Zwicky's birthday Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, 15 Feb +132 Galileo Galilei's birthday Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Sam Harris Giordano Bruno executed by the church Godfrey Harold Hardy (* 7 February +18, † 1 December +88) was a prominent English mathematician and atheist, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. The Hardy–Weinberg principle states that both allele and genotype frequencies in a population remain constant. That is, they are in equilibrium, from generation to generation, unless specific disturbing influences are introduced. Those disturbing influences include non-random mating, mutations, selection, limited population size, random genetic drift and gene flow. It is important to understand that outside the lab, one or more of these "disturbing influences" are always in effect. That is a Hardy Weinberg equilibrium is unlikely in nature. Nonetheless, the idea of genetic equilibrium is a basic principle of population genetics that provides a baseline for measuring genetic change. Nicolaus Copernicus' birthday Rupert Riedl's birthday Georg F. Händel's birthday “Perhaps it is with more fear that you deliver my sentence than I receive it” Giordano Bruno (* -311, † -259) was an Italian philosopher who speculated about an infinite universe and other worlds similar as the earth with intelligent life (De l'Infinito, Universo e Mondi). His cosmological theories conflicted with the catholic doctrine of an afterlife, the creation of the world, and the last judgement. Though imprissoned for seven years he denied to withdraw his theories. Bruno was executed by burning on Feb 17th -259. It took exactly 400 years until the katholic church declared the execution of Bruno as `wrong' (in +141). Today the Giordano Bruno Foundation, a German NPO, pursues the `support of evolutionary humanism' and criticism of religion. Comet Lulin close to earth (C) by Feministo 1 Sun 2 Mon 3 Tue 4 Wed 5 Thu 6 Fri 7 Sat 8 Sun 9 Mon 10 Tue 11 Wed 12 Thu 13 Fri 14 Sat 15 Sun 16 Mon 17 Tue 18 Wed 19 Thu 20 Fri 21 Sat 22 Sun 23 Mon 24 Tue 25 Wed 26 Thu 27 Fri 28 Sat DARWIN Peter Medawar's birthday Rupert Riedl (* 22 February +66, † 18 September +146) was an Austrian zoologist who made important contributions to the theory of evolution and many other biological fields, most importantly to marine biology. His DE+125 work, `Biology of Knowledge: The evolutionary basis of reason' examined cognitive abilities and the increasing complexity of biological diversification over the immense periods of evolutionary time. Nicolaus Copernicus (* 19 February -386, † 24 May -316) was the first astronomer to formulate a scientifically-based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. His epochal book, `De revolutionibus orbium coelestium' (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution. Felix Mendelssohn (* 3 February -50, † 4 November -12) was a German composer, pianist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Although Greek, Indian and Muslim savants had published heliocentric hypotheses centuries before Copernicus, his publication of a scientific theory of heliocentrism, demonstrating that the motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe, stimulated further scientific investigations and became a landmark in the history of modern science that is known as the Copernican Revolution. www.darwin-era.org