This page has been validated.
8
GALILEO
After failing to secure such an appointment at Bologna (1587), Padua (1588), Pisa (1588), and Florence (1588)—though the Pisa appointment was in the gift of the Grand Duke—he was on the point of going to the East in 1589 to "seek his fortune" in the company of a friend, when the Pisa professorship again fell vacant, and he secured the post with a salary of about five shillings a week. We cannot wonder at Vincenzio's poor opinion of mathematics as a means of livelihood, especially as the professor of medicine received more than thirty times as much. The position, however, was worth much more than its meagre official salary, as it naturally brought Galileo more pupils and probably raised his fees.
