Italy Museum to Display Fingers, Tooth Believed to Be Galileo's
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A Florence museum says two fingers and a tooth believed to belong to Galileo Galilei have been found and will go on display next spring.
Three fingers and a tooth were taken from the astronomer's body in 1737 and placed in a container.
Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of the History of Science, said a private collector had bought a container at auction containing two fingers and a tooth. The collector contacted Florence cultural officials and the parts and the container were found to match descriptions of the Galileo relics in historical documents.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The fingers, from the right hand, and the tooth, will be shown to the public next spring.
Galileo, who died in 1642, was branded a heretic by the Vatican for saying the Earth revolved around the Sun. In the early 1990s, Pope John Paul II rehabilitated him.