Galileo Galilei to the biography by Vincenzo Viviani) that these began by watching the swings of the bronze chandelier in the cathedral of Pisa, using his pulse as a timer. Later experiments are described in his "Two New Sciences". Galileo claimed that a simple pendulum is isochronous, i.e. that its swings always take the same amount of time, independently of the amplitude. In fact, this is only approximately true, as was discovered by Christiaan Huygens. Galileo also found that the square of the period varies directly with the length of the pendulum. Galileo's son, Vincenzo, sketched a clock based on his father's
Galileo Galilei for two years. He was educated from 1575 to 1578 in the Vallombrosa Abbey, about 30 km southeast of Florence. The surname Galilei derives from the given name of an ancestor, Galileo Bonaiuti, a physician, university teacher and politician who lived in Florence from 1370 to 1450; his descendants had changed their family name from Bonaiuti (or Buonaiuti) to Galilei in his honor in the late 14th century. Galileo Bonaiuti was buried in the same church, the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, where about 200 years later his more famous descendant Galileo Galilei was also buried. It was common