ROME — Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei’s corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday.
Three fingers, a vertebra and a tooth were removed from the astronomer’s body by admirers in 1737, 95 years after his death. One of the fingers was recovered soon afterward and is in the collection of the Museum of the History of Science, in Florence. The vertebra has been kept at the University of Padua. But the tooth and two fingers from the scientist’s right hand — the thumb and middle finger — were enclosed in a container passed on from generation to generation in the same family, Paolo Galluzzi, the museum’s director, said.
The container recently turned up at auction.
