Galileo May Get Eyes Checked Posthumously

ROME - Italian and British scientists want to exhume the body of 16th century astronomer Galileo for DNA tests to determine if his severe vision problems may have affected some of his findings.

The scientists told Reuters on Thursday that DNA tests would help answer some unresolved questions about the health of the man known as the father of astronomy, whom the Vatican condemned for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun.

"If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of History and Science in Florence, the city where Galileo is buried.

Watson, who has studied Galileo's handwriting, letters and portraits of the astronomer, suspects he may have had unilateral myopia, uveitis — an inflammation of the eye's middle layer — or a condition called creeping angle closure glaucoma.

Watson believes Galileo did not acquire his eye problems by looking at the sun but by systemic illnesses, including an attack when he was young that left him temporarily deaf and bloody discharges and arthritis so severe he was bedridden for weeks.

He was under particular stress when he was tried for heresy by the Inquisition because the Copernican theory he supported conflicted with the Bible.

Galileo was buried in Florence's Santa Croce Basilica about 100 years after his death. Before, his remains were hidden in a bell tower room because the Roman Catholic Church opposed a proper burial.