Greatest Scientist.

He was banned for his beliefs, and is really a true historical figure.

He was a really old Albert Einstein.

One of my all-time favorite historical figures. Unlike the vast majority of his contemporaries, Galileo refused to accept conventional, Aristotelian wisdom. Aristotle, for example, claimed that the speed of a falling object was related to its weight, and everyone just took that as the truth until Galileo made a brilliantly simple demonstration of Aristotle's mistake by dropping one big stone and one little stone from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to show that they hit the ground at the same time. As a scientist Galileo was a genius, of course, but to me his character is even more impressive than his scientific ability. His classic battle with the Church is the archetypal example of a man who values truth above all else. Galileo's support of the Copernican theory that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around (as he substantiated by making observations with his telescope), was interpreted by the Church as a direct challenge, since scripture taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo was ordered to stop advocating the Copernican heliocentric theory. He refused to stop, and the Inquisition put him on trial for heresy. At the risk of his own life, he would not back down, and the Church put him in jail for life (eventually permanent house arrest). How many of us would have done the same?