Historian says this 470-year-old book was owned by Galileo. His habit of praying was a dead giveaway

Italian historian Ivan Malara was going through the pages of Ptolemy’s Almagest, published in 1551, when he came across some handwritten notes. The text from the second century backed the theory of geocentrism, that Earth lies at the centre of the universe. The notes in the book were written by none other than Galileo Galilei, the greatest name in astronomy, who first stated that the Sun is at the centre of the solar system. Leading Galileo scholars have confirmed that the writing Malara found in the Almagest was the work of the astronomer. The National Central Library of Florence, Italy, announced the discovery. A paper on this finding will be submitted to the Journal for the History of Astronomy. Malara wrote for Il Sole 24 Ore that the finding shows that “Galileo, who was not only an astute reader of the Almagest but also a profound connoisseur of Ptolemy’s sophisticated mathematical demonstrations.”

Galileo prayed before reading the Almagest

According to analysts, Galileo wrote the notes around 1590. He owned this particular book 20 years before he discovered four moons of Jupiter, which are still referred to as the Galilean moons. Galileo was placed under house arrest in 1633 was for heresy, specifically saying that Earth orbits the Sun (heliocentrism) and our planet is not at the centre of the universe. He is also credited with discovering Saturn’s rings. The sign that Galileo owned the book was found in the form of a transcription of Psalm 145, Malara told Science. Notably, some historical records state that the famed astronomer “prayed each time he sat down with the Almagest.”

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Handwriting and annotation style matched Galileo's

Handwriting specialists at the Galileo Museum and Florence’s central library also went through the writing and confirmed that it matched the astronomer’s annotating styles, writing and abbreviations. In the notes, he also had a few negative comments on Ptolemy’s ideas, something that was also found in his later works. The National Central Library of Florence said that Galileo was familiar with Ptolemy’s geocentric system and his earliest writings show his “thorough knowledge of Ptolemy’s mathematical demonstrations and even [claimed] to have composed a commentary on the Almagest.” James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound, told Science that historians did not think that the reason Galileo rejected geocentrism was because of math. They called him “big-picture sort of guy”.

Malara says the finding shows Ptolemy’s mathematical demonstrations, along with Copernicus’s heliocentric view of the universe, together worked to help Galieleo make his evolutionary contributions to modern astronomy.