In FLORENCE, Italy this week a science museum re-opens after two years of renovations, sporting a new look and a new name – The Galileo Museum.

Named after the Italian physicist, mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei, known as the ‘Father of modern science’, who died in 1642, the museum contains the only surviving instruments designed and built by him, including the telescope lens he used to discover Jupiter’s moons.

But more bizarrely, also on display will be two of Galileo’s fingers – more precisely his thumb and middle finger from his right hand, mounted in a glass case, as well as another of his fingers and a tooth! In 1737 these items were taken from his body as it was being moved to a monumental tomb in Santa Croce Basilica, Florence. They stayed in the possession of one family for generations until disappearing in the early 20th century, before turning up at an auction last year.  

The Roman Catholic Church condemned Galileo and he was tried by the Inquisition after his most famous book ‘Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems’ was published in 1632, in which he publicly agreed with the idea of Copernicus that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the centre of the Universe. He was kept under house arrest for the rest of his life.

It was only in 1992 that Pope John Paul II expressed regret about how Galileo had been treated by the church and admitted that errors had been made.

When visiting Poland in 2008 as part of a link I have with the Medical University of Warsaw, I couldn’t help but take some time out to go and visit the Nicolaus Copernicus monument outside the headquarters of the Polish Academy of Sciences at the Staszic Palace.

Having had a love of astronomy since childhood, I remember from an early age reading about Copernicus, the 16th century father of modern astrology. His pioneering work ‘De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium’ (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres) suggested that the Earth rotated on its axis once a day and travelled around the sun once a year. This shocked people, and more especially the Church at the time as the idea that the Sun was in fact the centre of the universe and not the Earth was unthinkable!  The Church declared him to be a heretic and banned his book in 1616, some years after his death in 1543.

At the time of his death, the body of Copernicus was put into an unmarked tomb in the cathedral of his hometown of Frombork, Poland and there it lay for centuries until it was finally located after a long search, in 2005. The remains were positively identified by DNA testing in 2008, by comparing the bones and a tooth from the remains, to two strands of his hair found in a book that Copernicus once owned. 

And so, this Saturday the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus were once more laid to rest as his coffin was entombed in the 14th century cathedral of Frombork, his northern Polish hometown, and his grave marked by a black granite headstone engraved, quite aptly, with a map of the solar system.

Rest in Peace Nicolaus Copernicus.