Galileo Galilei was a total science rockstar who was born on February 15, 1564, in Pisa, Italy. He’s known for being the OG space investigator, using his super fancy telescope to discover that the earth orbits the sun (surprise! It’s not the center of the universe). He also saw the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, which was pretty dope. Basically, if you needed to know anything about the solar system, Galileo was your guy.

But Galileo wasn’t just about astronomy—he was also a physics and math whiz. He figured out the law of inertia (an object in motion stays in motion, unless something forces it to stop) and the formula for calculating the speed of falling objects. Basically, he was a one-man science factory.

Unfortunately, Galileo had some haters—namely, the Catholic Church. They didn’t like how his ideas clashed with their beliefs, and they made him recant his theories and put him under house arrest for the last 9 years of his life. Talk about a bummer.

But despite the drama, Galileo is still remembered as a science icon and a symbol of intellectual freedom. So let’s all raise a glass (preferably filled with a nice Chianti) to Galileo on his birthday and celebrate all the brilliant scientists out there who are always looking to expand our understanding of the world.