Vincenzo Galilei, Italian lute player and composer (b. 1520)
Vincenzo Galilei (born 3 April 1520, Santa Maria a Monte, Italy died 2 July 1591, Florence, Italy) was an Italian lutenist, composer, and music theorist. His children included the astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei and the lute virtuoso and composer Michelagnolo Galilei. Vincenzo was a figure in the musical life of the late Renaissance and contributed significantly to the musical revolution which demarcates the beginning of the Baroque era.
In his study of pitch and string tension, Galilei produced perhaps the first non-linear mathematical description of a natural phenomenon known to history. credit him with directing the activity of his son away from pure, abstract mathematics and towards experimentation using mathematical quantitative description of the results, a direction of importance for the history of physics and natural science.