William R. Shea is Galileo Professor of the History of Science at the University of Padua, Italy (where Galileo himself held the Chair in Mathematics). He has written several books on Galileo and the Scientific Revolution. The latest, written with the Spanish scholar Mariano Artigas, are Galileo in Rome: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Genius (2003) and Galileo Observed: Science and the Politics of Belief (2006).