115. Before very long it became evident that Galilei had no special taste for medicine, a study selected for him chiefly as leading to a reasonably lucrative professional career, and that his real bent was for mathematics and its applications to experimental science. He had received little or no formal teaching in mathematics before his second year at the University, in the course of which he happened to overhear a lesson on Euclid’s geometry, given at the Grand Duke’s court, and was so fascinated that he continued to attend the course, at first surreptitiously, afterwards openly; his interest in the subject was thereby so much stimulated, and his aptitude for it was so marked, that he obtained his father’s consent to abandon medicine in favour of mathematics. In 1585, however, poverty compelled him to quit the University without completing the regular course and obtaining a degree, and the next four years were spent chiefly at home, where he continued to read and to think on scientific subjects. In the year 1586 he wrote his first known scientific essay,[66] which was circulated in manuscript, and only printed during the present century. 116. In 1589 he was appointed for three years to a professorship of mathematics (including astronomy) at Pisa. A miserable stipend, equivalent to about five shillings a week, was attached to the post, but this he was to some extent able to supplement by taking private pupils. In his new position Galilei had scope for his remarkable power of exposition, but far from being content with giving lectures on traditional lines he also carried out a series of scientific investigations, important both in themselves and on account of the novelty in the method of investigation employed.