Historical figure report outline, with a worked Galileo example

The outline template

Scale the shares up or down for other lengths. A 500 word report merges parts 2 and 3 and keeps two achievements; a 2,000 word report adds a section on the figure's ideas in their own words.

Writing the thesis

A thesis is a claim someone could disagree with. “Galileo was an Italian scientist” is a fact. “Galileo was a great scientist” is an opinion with nothing to test. A good thesis names what the person did and why it mattered, and often includes a tension:

• Galileo: His telescope observations of 1609 and 1610 did not prove that the Earth moves, but they broke key arguments for the old Earth-centred universe, and his determination to argue that case in print led to his trial in 1633.
• Marie Curie: Curie's discovery of polonium and radium mattered less than her method: measuring radioactivity precisely showed it was a property of atoms, which opened a new branch of physics.
• Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln moved from saving the Union as his first aim in 1862 to making emancipation a war goal, and the documents show that change happening under military and political pressure.

Worked outline: Galileo Galilei

This is a full outline for a 1,000 word report on Galileo Galilei (born 15 February 1564, died 8 January 1642), with the evidence for each part.

• Introduction. Hook: in January 1610 a professor in Padua pointed a homemade telescope at Jupiter and saw four small stars that moved. Thesis as above.
• Early life. Born in Pisa; his father Vincenzo was a musician who tested musical theory by experiment. Studied medicine at the University of Pisa from 1581, switched to mathematics and left without a degree. Professor of mathematics at Pisa (1589) and Padua (1592 to 1610).
• Turning point. In 1609 he heard of a Dutch spyglass and built his own, improving it to about twenty times magnification by the end of the year.
• Achievement 1: Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger), March 1610: mountains on the Moon, many more stars than the eye can see, and four moons of Jupiter, which he named after the Medici family. Evidence: his own text and drawings.
• Achievement 2: the phases of Venus (late 1610), which the Ptolemaic system could not explain. Note for accuracy: they also fit Tycho Brahe's system, so they did not prove Copernicus right.
• Achievement 3: Two New Sciences (Leiden, 1638), written under house arrest: the laws of falling bodies and the strength of materials, foundations of later physics.
• Conflict 1: the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615), arguing that the Bible teaches how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. In 1616 the Church declared the Sun-centred view contrary to scripture, and Galileo was warned not to hold or defend it.
• Conflict 2: the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) argued for Copernicus through a character the Pope's supporters read as mocking him. Tried by the Roman Inquisition, Galileo abjured on 22 June 1633 and lived under house arrest at Arcetri until his death.
• Legacy. Turned the telescope into a scientific instrument and treated nature as written in mathematics. In 1992 Pope John Paul II accepted a commission's findings that the Church had erred in the case. Avoid the simple story of science against religion: many churchmen supported him, and the dispute also involved politics and personalities.
• Conclusion. Return to the thesis: the evidence was strong but not final, and the trial was about authority as much as astronomy.

A model paragraph from the report

Each body paragraph follows the same shape: a point, evidence, an explanation of the evidence, and a link back to the thesis. Here is one, from part 4:

Using the figure's own words

One or two short quotations from the figure make a report stronger, if they are exact and cited. Galileo's view of nature, from The Assayer (1623), is a good fit for the legacy section. Standard English translations render it as saying that the book of the universe is written in the language of mathematics, without which one wanders in a dark labyrinth. Because this is a translation from Italian, name the translator you quote, or paraphrase it as above.

Avoid “And yet it moves”. It is a legend first printed in 1757. Our guide how to check if a quote is real explains how to spot lines like it.

The bibliography

List primary sources (the figure's own writings and documents from the time) separately from secondary ones if your teacher asks. For the Galileo report, a sound list would be:

• Galileo Galilei. Sidereus Nuncius, or The Sidereal Messenger. Translated by Albert Van Helden, University of Chicago Press, 1989.
• Finocchiaro, Maurice A., editor. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. University of California Press, 1989.
• Drake, Stillman. Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography. University of Chicago Press, 1978.
• Heilbron, J. L. Galileo. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Not sure which is which? See primary and secondary sources.

Common mistakes, and a final check

• A list of dates with no thesis. Every paragraph should help prove one claim.
• Only praise. Include opposition, failures and what critics said.
• Legends as facts: Galileo dropping balls from the Leaning Tower is a story told by his pupil Vincenzo Viviani, and historians doubt it happened.
• Judging the past only by today's standards. Explain what people believed at the time and why, then evaluate.
• Quotations from quote websites. Use editions and translations you can name.

Before you write, it can help to talk through your thesis. You could put your questions to an AI recreation of Galileo on Yuga, by voice or text, and see which parts of his story he stresses. It is not the real Galileo and can be wrong, so check everything against the sources above and cite those.