Galileo Letter Is Fake? Jewel of Discoveries in the Heavens Is ‘Total Forgery’, University of Michigan Library Confirms

An international investigation by a history professor recently found that a handwritten document thought to have been written by Galileo Galilei is "a fake."

Specifically, watermarks in the paper date back to no earlier than the 18th century, over a century after the famous astronomer's death.

As specified in a ScienceAlert report, the said single piece of paper, a jewel of the collection of the University of Michigan Library, is "actually a forgery."

According to the interim dean of Michigan's libraries, it was pretty "gut-wrenching" when they initially learned "our Galileo was not actually a Galileo."

Manuscript Authenticated

According to the university's statement, it had had the manuscript since the late 1930s, when it was donated by Detroit businessman Tracy McGregor, who had acquired the document at another collection's auction in 1934.

The catalog in this said auction claimed that Cardinal Pietro Maffi, the Archbishop of Pisa, had authenticated the manuscript by comparing it with other Galileo letters in this particular collection.

At the top of the manuscript is a draft of a letter written by Galileo before the presentation about a new telescope in 1609 to the Dodge of Venice.

The famed astronomer indeed wrote a version of this letter. A final draft can be found in the State Archive in Venezia, Italy.

A Total 'Forgery'

The document's lower part is a set of notes on the moons of Jupiter, also based on actual notes taken by Galileo. Meanwhile, the final draft of such notes is also found in Italy, specifically at the Florence National Central Library.

However, when historian Nick Wilding from Georgia State University saw an image of the document from which, he suspected something was strange.

In a report from The New York Times, the historian said the ink, the handwriting, and some of the choices of words appeared odd for a 17th-century document.

In May 2022, Wilding sent curator Pablo Alvares from the University of Michigan Library an email containing his concerns, and the University, in turn, launched an international investigation.

After three months, the university announced that Wilding was right. Indeed, the document was not written by Galileo but most likely by a prolific Italian forger known as Tobia Nicotra, who operated in the 1920s and 1930s.

Watermark Validates the Finding

Validating the finding was the watermark on the paper. The old paper frequently contains watermarks that identify the marker of the paper and its place of production, as specified by the University of Michigan Library.

Moreover, the university could not find evidence that the Galileo document existed earlier than the 1930s. Even worse, the two documents that Maffi claimed to have compared the manuscript to have it authenticated turned out to be Nicotra forgeries.

The statement indicated that Wilding also found a similar Nicotra Galileo forgery, a letter supposedly from 1607, in the New York City-based Morgan Library collections.

The University of Michigan Library is currently reconsidering how the Galileo document must be presented. It is plausible that the hoax itself could become a lesson.

Later on, also, as explained in the library statement, it may come to serve the research, teaching, and learning interests in this arena of forgeries, hoaxes, and fakes. This timeless discipline has never been more relevant.

Related information about the Galileo Letter is shown on Veuer's YouTube video below:

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