Padua University. Engraving of the University of Padua, Italy, in 1600. Italian physicist & astro- nomer Galileo and British physiologist William Harvey worked there at about this time. The university had been founded in 1222 by a group of dissident students from Bologna University. In 1600 it was one of Europe's leading universities. Galileo was Professor of Mathematics there during 1592-1610. In his time there he invented a geomet- ric and military compass. He also studied motion, particularly with regard to falling objects and pendulums. Harvey studied there during 1599-1602 under Fabricius, an anatomist who discovered most of the valves in the veins at about this time.