By the end of Galileo’s first year, the university authorities were docking his pay … For his refusal to wear the regulation academic regalia at all times. Galileo deemed official doctoral dress a pretentious nuisance and he derided the toga in a three-hundred-line verse spoof that enjoyed wide readership in that college town [Pisa]. Any kind of clothing got in the way of men’s and women’s frank appraisals of each others attributes, he argued in ribald rhyme, while professional uniforms hid the true merits of character under a cloak of social standing. Worse, the dignity of the professor’s gown guarded him from the brothel, denying him the evil pleasures of whoring while resigning him to the equally sinful solace of …. The gown impeded walking, to say nothing of working.

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Sobel, D. (2000). Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (LATER PRINTING.). Penguin (Non-Classics) , p. 19, Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Galileos-Daughter-Historical-Memoir-Science/dp/0140280553/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294714392&sr=1-1-fkmr1   

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