Christiaan Huygens

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(1629–95; b. The Hague, Netherlands; d. The Hague, Netherlands) Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and horologist. The son of a diplomat, Huygens studied law and mathematics, first at U Leiden and then at the College of Orange at Breda. His principal interest was astronomy, but this required precision instrumentation and led to his devising new methods for polishing lenses and keeping accurate time — in 1656 he patented the first pendulum clock. The previous year he had discovered the first of Saturn's moons. In 1657 he wrote the first printed work on probability, De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae (Calculation in Games of Chance).

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Christiaan Huygens, portrait by C. Netscher, 1671; in the Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (credit: Courtesy of the Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague)

(born April 14, 1629, The Hague — died July 8, 1695, The Hague) Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist. He was the first to use a pendulum to regulate a clock (1656). He invented a method of grinding and polishing telescope lenses, and he used his telescopes to discover the true shape of Saturn's rings (1659). He developed explanations of reflection and refraction based on the principle of secondary wave fronts, now called Huygens' principle. He developed the wave theory of light (1678) and also contributed to the science of dynamics. His work on rotating bodies led to solutions of problems involving oscillation of a pendulum and uniform circular motion. He was also the first to determine acceleration due to gravity.

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Christiaan Huygens

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[b. The Hague, Holland, April 14, 1629, d. The Hague, June 8, 1695]

Huygens's first fame was as an astronomer. In the 1650s, using a refracting telescope he built himself, Huygens explored the Orion Nebula; discovered Saturn's largest moon, Titan; correctly identified the rings of Saturn; and made the first map of the planet Mars, enabling him to determine the planet's size and period of rotation. In physics, Huygens studied pendulums, making the first practical pendulum clocks, and the nature of light. In 1678, Huygens presented his wave theory of light, saying light behaves much like an ocean wave moving through the sea. Later work by Thomas Young confirmed that light acts as a wave.

Music Encyclopedia: Christiaan Huygens

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(b The Hague, 14 April 1629; d there, 8 June 1695). Dutch scientist and theorist, second son of Constantijn Huygens. His importance to music theory lies in the Novus cyclus harmonicus (1661) in which he demonstrated the mathematical basis of the old theory of division of the octave into 31 equal parts. He also worked on the comma fault of mean-tone temperament.

Biography: Christiaan Huygens

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The Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) was the first to recognize the rings of Saturn, made pioneering studies of the dynamics of moving bodies, and was the leading advocate of the wave, or pulse, theory of light.

Born in The Hague on April 14, 1629, Christiaan Huygens was the second son of Constantin Huygens, a brilliant diplomat and Renaissance scholar. Privately tutored at home until he was 16, Christiaan early showed signs of intellectual brilliance, devoting much time to drawing and making mechanical models and devices as well as demonstrating exceptional skill in geometry. He studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and after 2 years moved on to Breda, where he completed his studies.

Telescopes and Observations of Saturn

Huygens's first published work, on the quadrature of various mathematical curves, appeared in 1651. In addition, as a result of his study of collision phenomena between hard, elastic bodies, by 1656 he had demonstrated the incorrectness of René Descartes's laws of motion and impact, although he did not announce his conclusions until some 12 years later, and his complete study of such phenomena was published posthumously. The best-known of his early researches, however, were his efforts to improve telescope lenses and his observations of the planet Saturn.

In 1655 Huygens spent several months in Paris. He attended the informal gatherings of the so-called Montmort Academy, an important precursor of the French Academy of Sciences and, to at least some of its members, reported on his discovery of Titan, the first of Saturn's moons to be observed. He had initially been attracted to Saturn by its apparently anomalous shape, described by Galileo as "three spheres which almost touch each other, which never change their relative positions, and are arranged in a row along the zodiac so that the middle sphere is three times as large as the others." Intrigued by this peculiar shape, Huygens realized that its resolution would depend on constructing improved telescopes, less subject to various aberrations and more capable of producing detailed images.

Upon returning from Paris, Huygens devoted full time to his efforts to construct such improved eyepieces and lens systems, and although he was unsuccessful in his attempts to produce lenses with hyperbolic or elliptical surfaces, he and his elder brother did succeed in figuring and polishing lenses with an accuracy never before attained. With telescopes utilizing these improved components, great progress was made toward solving the problem of Saturn's appearance. What had originally appeared as a "trispherical" form now appeared as simply some sort of band passing across the middle of the planet, and, early in 1656, utilizing a still better telescope, Huygens was able to clearly distinguish a thin ring surrounding the planet at a slight angle to the ecliptic. In 1659 he published his complete study of Saturn in a work entitled Systema Saturnium.

Huygens's interest in improving telescopes continued throughout his life. For measuring the angular diameter of planets, he invented a type of micrometer consisting of a series of small brass plates of varying widths which could be slipped across the focal plane of the telescope. Recognizing that the eyepiece could be made to partially correct for certain defects in the objective lens of a telescope, he designed a special eyepiece which still bears his name, and his improved methods of grinding lenses allowed him to construct longer telescopes with greater powers of magnification. These "aerial telescopes" exceeded 30 feet in length and dispensed entirely with the usual tubular enclosure, utilizing instead two shorter tubes, one for the eyepiece and one for the objective lens. Huygens never was, however, a regular astronomical observer; with the exception of his observations of Saturn, his contributions to astronomy exhibited a strong practical bias.

Pendulum Clock

This practical aspect of Huygens's work is also manifested in the great time and energy he devoted to the perfection of the pendulum clock. Although he had been working on it for some years, Huygens first described his successful application of the pendulum to the escapement mechanism of the standard mechanical clock in 1658.

Sometime after he had produced the first pendulum clock, Huygens became interested in its obvious application to the problem of determining longitude at sea. One of the simplest solutions to this important navigation problem involved the construction of an extremely accurate time keeping device with which local time could be compared with a standard time at, say, Paris or London. Although the pendulum clock was the most accurate such device then available, its motion was easily disturbed by the movement of the ship at sea. In an effort to overcome this difficulty, Huygens invented a pendulum whose period of oscillation was independent of the amplitude of its swing (for regular pendulums this isochronous property exists only for very small amplitudes). Although the discovery of a pendulum whose path was a cycloidal arc provided such an isochronous device, it did not solve the problem of constructing a marine clock or chronometer whose accuracy would not be affected by the pitching of a ship.

Paris and the Study of Dynamics

In 1660 Huygens returned to Paris, where he again attended meetings of the Montmort Academy. By 1661 he had discovered a basic principle of mechanics which allowed him to solve with ease certain types of problems which English mathematicians at the time found especially difficult. Now fundamental, this principle stated that the center of gravity of a body or system of bodies, acting solely under the influence of gravity, cannot rise above the level from which it initially falls. In recognition of the significance of this and other aspects of his work, he was in 1663 elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

The French Academy of Sciences was officially formed in 1666, and at the invitation of Louis XIV's chief minister, Huygens returned to Paris and a position as a leader and foundation member of the new academy. He was one of the chief influences in guiding the early affairs of the academy and, profiting from his contacts with English men of science, he emphasized the need for careful observation and experiment. With the exception of two trips to The Hague because of illness, he remained in Paris until 1681.

In the years after his return to Paris, Huygens's interests turned increasingly from astronomy to terrestrial mechanics, and as the result of his work in this field, he has rightfully been regarded as one of the founders of the science of dynamics. His earliest studies in this area dealt with impact phenomena, and although he had completed this work as early as 1656, his results were reported only in 1669, when he presented to the Royal Society a clear and concise statement of the laws governing the collision of elastic bodies. Although of great significance because of their statement of the conservation of mechanical energy in the collision of perfectly elastic bodies and because of their refutation of the incorrect laws of impact earlier presented by Descartes, Huygens's results were presented without proof, and their complete demonstration was published posthumously in 1703.

One of the great scientific treatises of the 17th century, Huygens's masterpiece, Horologium oscillatorium, appeared in 1673. More than just a summary of his researches on the pendulum clock, it in fact was a general work on dynamics containing numerous original discoveries. In it he demonstrated the isochronous nature of a body moving freely under the influence of gravity along a cycloidal path. He showed how to calculate the period of oscillation of a simple pendulum. He provided a definitive solution to the problem of compound and physical pendulums, demonstrating how to calculate the "center of oscillation" and the length of an equivalent simple pendulum. And, in an appendix, he presented the basic laws of centrifugal force governing bodies moving with uniform circular motion. The significance of this monumental work was immediately recognized.

Wave, or Pulse, Theory of Light

Perhaps the best-known of Huygens's varied pursuits is his work on physical optics and his development of the wave, or, more accurately, pulse, theory of light. First presented before the Academy of Sciences in 1678, his Traité de la lumière (Treatise on Light) was, characteristically, not published until 1690. The theory of light put forth in it, however, was the direct result of his study of impact phenomena and represented the union of the physical and mathematical aspects of the study of optics.

Light, Huygens suggested, consisted of the longitudinal vibrations of an all-pervasive ether composed of small, hard, elastic particles, each of which transmitted the impulses it received to all contiguous particles without itself suffering any permanent displacement. The propagation of light was thus reduced to the transmission of motion. Each particle of a luminous body, such as a candle flame, sent out its own set of concentric, spherical wavelets. Formulating what is today known as Huygens's principle, he conceived of each ether particle itself as also being the source of a new wavelet, which was likewise propagated to the adjacent particles. Within the boundaries where these individual wavelets reinforced each other and formed a coherent wave envelope, light was propagated. Outside the boundaries, there being no reinforcement of the wavelets, was shadow and no propagation of light.

Return to Holland and Later Life

In 1681 Huygens returned to The Hague. Although ill health was the immediate cause, additional personal and religious pressures combined to make permanent his return to his native country. He had never married, and his later years were characterized by considerable solitariness; in his correspondence he often lamented the absence of anyone with whom to discuss scientific topics. He did, however, maintain his extensive correspondence, and although his mathematical and abstract studies suffered a marked diminution after 1680, the general pattern of his life remained little changed until his death on July 8, 1695.

Unlike many men of science in the 17th century, Huygens never occupied himself to any significant extent with either philosophy or theology. He devoted his efforts entirely to the pursuit of science, and his contributions to astronomy, dynamics, and optics were of fundamental importance.

Christiaan Huygens
Christiaan Huygens
Born	14 April 1629 The Hague, Netherlands
Died	8 July 1695 (aged 66) Netherlands
Residence	Netherlands, France
Nationality	Dutch
Fields	Physics Mathematics Astronomy Horology Science fiction
Institutions	Royal Society of London French Academy of Sciences
Alma mater	University of Leiden College of Orange
Doctoral advisor	Frans van Schooten John Pell
Known for	Titan Explanation Saturn's rings Centrifugal force Collision formulae Pendulum clock Huygens–Fresnel principle Wave theory Birefringence First theoretical physicist
Influences	René Descartes Frans van Schooten Blaise Pascal Marin Mersenne
Influenced	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Isaac Newton

Life

Christiaan Huygens by Bernard Vaillant, Museum Hofwijck, Voorburg

Christiaan Huygens. Cut from the engraving following the painting of Caspar Netscher by G. Edelinck, between 1684 and 1687.

Huygens' giant telescope without tube. Picture from his 1684 Astroscopia Compendiaria tubi optici molimine liberata (compound telescopes without a tube)

Huygens' explanation for the aspects of Saturn, Systema Saturnium, 1659.

Christiaan Huygens was born in April 1629 at The Hague, the second son of Constantijn Huygens, (1596–1687), a friend of mathematician and philosopher René Descartes, and of Suzanna van Baerle (deceased 1637), whom Constantijn had married on 6 April 1627. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange in Breda. After a stint as a diplomat, Huygens turned to science.

French Academy of Sciences and Royal Society

The Royal Society elected Huygens a member in 1663. In the year 1666 Huygens moved to Paris where he held a position at the French Academy of Sciences under the patronage of Louis XIV. Using the Paris Observatory (completed in 1672) he made further astronomical observations. In 1684 he published "Astroscopia Compendiaria" which presented his new aerial (tubeless) telescope.

Death

Huygens moved back to The Hague in 1681 after suffering serious illness. He attempted to return to France in 1685 but the revocation of the Edict of Nantes precluded this move. Huygens died in The Hague on 8 July 1695, and was buried in the Grote Kerk.

Scientific work

Mathematics

Probability theory

After Blaise Pascal encouraged him to do so, Huygens wrote the first book on probability theory,^[2] De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ("On Reasoning in Games of Chance"),^[3] which he had published in 1657.

Physics

Mechanics

Huygens formulated what is now known as the second law of motion of Isaac Newton in a quadratic form. Newton reformulated and generalized that law. In 1659 Huygens derived the now well-known formula for the centrifugal force, exerted by an object describing a circular motion, for instance on the string to which it is attached, in modern notation:

$F_{cf}=\frac{m\ v^2}{r}$

with m the mass of the object, v the velocity and r the radius. Furthermore, Huygens concluded that Descartes' laws for the elastic collision of two bodies must be wrong and formulated the correct laws.

Wave theory

Huygens is remembered especially for his wave theory of light, expounded in his Traité de la lumière (see also Huygens-Fresnel principle). The later theory of light by Isaac Newton in his Opticks proposed a different explanation for reflection, refraction and interference of light assuming the existence of light particles. The interference experiments of Thomas Young vindicated Huygens' wave theory in 1801, as the results could no longer be explained with light particles (see however wave-particle duality).

Optics

Huygens experimented with double refraction (birefringence) in Icelandic crystal (calcite) and explained it with his wavetheory and polarised light.

Clocks

He also worked on the construction of accurate clocks, suitable for naval navigation. In 1658 he published a book on this topic called Horologium. His invention of the pendulum clock, patented in 1657, was a breakthrough in timekeeping.

Devices known as escapements regulate the rate of a watch or clock, and the anchor escapement represented a major step in the development of accurate watches. Subsequent to this publication, Huygens discovered that the cycloid was an isochronous curve and, applied to pendulum clocks in the form of cycloidal cheeks guiding a flexible pendulum suspension, would ensure a regular (i.e isochronous) swing of the pendulum irrespective of its amplitude, i.e. irrespective of how it moved side to side. The mathematical and practical details of this finding were published in "Horologium Oscillatorium" of 1673. Huygens was the first to derive the formula for the period of the mathematical pendulum (with massless rod or cable), in modern notation:

$T_{slinger}= 2 \pi \sqrt{\frac{l}{g}}$

with T the period, l the length of the pendulum and g the gravitational acceleration.

Huygens also observed that two pendulums mounted on the same beam will come to swing in perfectly opposite directions, an observation he referred to as odd sympathy which in modern times is known as resonance. Contrary to sometimes expressed popular belief Huygens was not a clockmaker, and is not known to have ever made any clock himself; he was a scholar, scientist and inventor, and the oldest known pendulum clocks were made by Salomon Coster in The Hague, under a license from Huygens.

The oldest known Huygens style pendulum clock is dated 1657 and can be seen at the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7], which also shows an important astronomical clock owned and used by Huygens.

Huygens also developed a balance spring clock more or less contemporaneously with, though separately from, Robert Hooke, and controversy over whose invention was the earlier persisted for centuries. In February 2006, a long-lost copy of Hooke's handwritten notes from several decades' Royal Society meetings was discovered in a cupboard in Hampshire, and the balance-spring controversy appears by evidence contained in those notes to be settled in favor of Hooke's claim.^[8]^[9]

Internal combustion and other inventions

In 1673, Huygens carried out experiments with internal combustion. Although he designed a basic form of internal combustion engine, fueled by gunpowder, he never successfully built one.

In 1675, Christiaan Huygens patented a pocket watch. He also invented numerous other devices, including a 31 tone to the octave keyboard instrument which made use of his discovery of 31 equal temperament.

Astronomy

Saturn's rings and Titan

In 1655, Huygens proposed that Saturn was surrounded by a solid ring, "a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic." Using a 50 power refracting telescope that he designed himself, Huygens also discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan.^[10] In the same year he observed and sketched the Orion Nebula. His drawing, the first such known of the Orion nebula, was published in Systema Saturnium in 1659. Using his modern telescope he succeeded in subdividing the nebula into different stars. (The brighter interior of the Orion Nebula bears the name of the Huygens Region in his honour.) He also discovered several interstellar nebulae and some double stars.

Transit of Mercury

On May 3, 1661, he observed planet Mercury transit over the Sun, using the telescope of telescope maker Richard Reeves in London together with astronomer Thomas Streete and Richard Reeves.^[11]

Possible depiction of Huygens left of center, detail from l'Établissement de l'Académie des Sciences et fondation de l'observatoire', 1666 by Henri Testelin. Colbert presents the members of the newly founded Académie des Sciences to king Louis XIV of France, around 1675.

Extraterrestrial Life

Christiaan Huygens believed in existence of extraterrestrial life. Prior to his death in 1695, he completed a book entitled Cosmotheoras in which he discussed his notions on extraterrestrial life. Huygens was of the opinion that life on other planets is pretty much similar to that on Earth. He thought that availability of water in liquid form was essential for existence of life and therefore the properties of water should vary from planet to planet, since the kind of water that is found on Earth would instantly freeze on Jupiter and vaporize on Venus. He even reported observing dark and bright spots on the surface of planet Mars and Jupiter. This he explained could only be justified by existence of water and ice on those planets. ^[12]

Works

Huygens on the Dutch 25-guilder banknote from the 1950's, showing his country house Hofwijck, Saturn, its moon Titan and an eclipse.

1649 - De iis quae liquido supernatant (About the parts above the warer, unpublished)
1651 - Cyclometriae
1651 - Theoremata de quadratura hyperboles, ellipsis et circuli (theorems concerning the quadrature of the hyperbola, ellipse and circle, Huygens' first publication)
1654 - De circuli magnitudine inventa
1656 - De Saturni Luna observatio nova (About the new observation of the moon of Saturn - discovery of Titan)
1656 - De motu corporum ex percussione, published only in 1703
1657 - De ratiociniis in ludo aleae = Van reeckening in spelen van geluck (translated by Frans van Schooten)
1659 - Systema saturnium
1673 - Horologium oscillatorium sive de motu pendularium (theory and design of the pendulum clock, dedicated to Louis XIV of France)
1673 - De vi centrifuga (Concerning the centrifugal force)
1684 - Astroscopia Compendiaria tubi optici molimine liberata (compound telescopes without a tube)
1685 - Memoriën aengaende het slijpen van glasen tot verrekijckers (How to grind telescope lenses)
1686 - Kort onderwijs aengaende het gebruijck der horologiën tot het vinden der lenghten van Oost en West (How to use clocks to establish the longitude
1690 - Traité de la lumière
1690 - Discours de la cause de la pesanteur (Discourse about gravity, from 1669?)
1691 - Lettre touchant le cycle harmonique (Rotterdam, concerning the 31-tone system)
1698 - Cosmotheoros , sciencefiction
1703 - Opuscula posthuma including
- De motu corporum ex percussione (Concerning the motions of colliding bodies - contains the first correct laws for collision, dating from 1656).
- Descriptio automati planetarii (description and design of a planetarium)
1724 - Novus cyclus harmonicus (Leiden, after Huygens' death)
1728 - Christiani Hugenii Zuilichemii, dum viveret Zelhemii toparchae, opuscula posthuma ... (pub. 1728) Alternate title: Opera reliqua, concerning optics and physics

1888-1950 - Huygens, Christiaan. Oeuvres complètes. The Hague Complete work, editors D. Bierens de Haan (tome=deel 1-5), J. Bosscha (6-10), D.J. Korteweg (11-15), A.A. Nijland (15), J.A. Vollgraf (16-22).

Tome I: Correspondance 1638-1656 (1888). Tome II: Correspondance 1657-1659 (1889). Tome III: Correspondance 1660-1661 (1890). Tome IV: Correspondance 1662-1663 (1891). Tome V: Correspondance 1664-1665 (1893). Tome VI: Correspondance 1666-1669 (1895). Tome VII: Correspondance 1670-1675 (1897). Tome VIII: Correspondance 1676-1684 (1899). Tome IX: Correspondance 1685-1690 (1901). Tome X: Correspondance 1691-1695 (1905).

Tome XI: Travaux mathématiques 1645-1651 (1908). Tome XII: Travaux mathématiques pures 1652-1656 (1910).

Tome XIII, Fasc. I: Dioptrique 1653, 1666 (1916). Tome XIII, Fasc. II: Dioptrique 1685-1692 (1916).

Tome XIV: Calcul des probabilités. Travaux de mathématiques pures 1655-1666 (1920).

Tome XV: Observations astronomiques. Système de Saturne. Travaux astronomiques 1658-1666 (1925).

Tome XVI: Mécanique jusqu’à 1666. Percussion. Question de l’existence et de la perceptibilité du mouvement absolu. Force centrifuge (1929). Tome XVII: L’horloge à pendule de 1651 à 1666. Travaux divers de physique, de mécanique et de technique de 1650 à 1666. Traité des couronnes et des parhélies (1662 ou 1663) (1932). Tome XVIII: L'horloge à pendule ou à balancier de 1666 à 1695. Anecdota (1934). Tome XIX: Mécanique théorique et physique de 1666 à 1695. Huygens à l’Académie royale des sciences (1937).

Tome XX: Musique et mathématique. Musique. Mathématiques de 1666 à 1695 (1940).

Tome XXI: Cosmologie (1944).

Tome XXII: Supplément à la correspondance. Varia. Biographie de Chr. Huygens. Catalogue de la vente des livres de Chr. Huygens (1950).

Portraits

During his lifetime

1639 - His father Constantijn Huygens in the midst of his five children by Adriaen Hanneman, painting with medaillons, Mauritshuis, The Hague
1671 - Portrait by Caspar Netscher, Museum Boerhaave, Leiden, loan from Haags Historisch Museum
~1675 - Possible depiction of Huygens on l'Établissement de l'Académie des Sciences et fondation de l'observatoire, 1666 by Henri Testelin. Colbert presents the members of the newly founded Académie des Sciences to king Louis XIV of France. Musée National du Château et des Trianons de Versailles, Versailles
1679 - Medaillon portrait in relief by the French sculptor Jean-Jacques Clérion
1686 - Portrait in pastel by Bernard Vaillant, Museum Hofwijck, Voorburg
bewteen 1684 and 1687 - Engraving by G. Edelinck after the painting by Netscher
1688 - Portrait by Pierre Bourguignon, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Amsterdam

Named after Huygens

Science

The Huygens probe: The lander for the Saturnian moon Titan, part of the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn
Asteroid 2801 Huygens
A crater on Mars
Mons Huygens, a mountain on the Moon
Huygens Software, a microscope image processing package.
Achromatic two element eyepiece designed by him.
The Huygens–Fresnel principle, a simple model to understand disturbances in wave propagation.
Huygens wavelets, the fundamental mathematical basis for scalar diffraction theory
W.I.S.V. Christiaan Huygens: Dutch study guild for the studies Mathematics and Computer Science at the Delft University of Technology
Huygens Laboratory: Home of the Physics department at Leiden University, The Netherlands
Huygens Supercomputer: National Supercomputer facility of The Netherlands, located at SARA in Amsterdam
The Huygens-building in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, first building on the Space Business park opposite Estec (ESA)
The Huygens-building at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. One of the major buildings of the science department at the university of Nijmegen.

Other

Christiaan Huygens College, High School located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
The Christiaan Huygens, a ship of the Nederland Line.
Huygens Scholarship Programme for international students and Dutch students

References

^ Christiaan Huygens, Traité de la lumiere (Leiden, Netherlands: Pieter van der Aa, 1690), Chapter 1. (Note: In the preface to his Traité, Huygens states that in 1678 he first communicated his book to the French Royal Academy of Sciences.)
^ "I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably." —Christiaan Huygens, Letter to Pierre Perrault, 'Sur la préface de M. Perrault de son traité del'Origine des fontaines' [1763], Oeuvres Complétes de Christiaan Huygens (1897), Vol. 7, 298. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 163. Quotation selected by W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds., 2005), Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations ISBN 0-19-858409-1 p. 317 quotation 4.
^ p963-965, Jan Gullberg, Mathematics from the birth of numbers, W. W. Norton & Company; ISBN 039304002X ISBN 978-0393040029
^ Hans van den Ende: "Huygens's Legacy, The Golden Age of the Pendulum Clock", Fromanteel Ldt., 2004,
^ van Kersen, Frits & van den Ende, Hans: Oppwindende Klokken - De Gouden Eeuw van het Slingeruurwerk 12 September - 29 November 2004 [Exhibition Catalog Paleis Het Loo]; Apeldoorn: Paleis Het Loo,2004
^ Hooijmaijers, Hans; Telling time - Devices for time measurement in museum Boerhaave - A Descriptive Catalogue; Leiden: Museum Boerhaave, 2005
^ No Author given; Chistiaan Huygens 1629-1695, Chapter 1: Slingeruurwerken; Leiden: Museum Boerhaave, 1988
^ nature - International Weekly Journal of Science, number 439, pages 638-639, 9 February 2006
^ Notes and Records of the Royal Society (2006) 60, pages 235-239, 'Report - The Return of the Hooke Folio' by Robyn Adams and Lisa Jardine
^ Ron Baalke, Historical Background of Saturn's Rings
^ Peter Louwman, Christiaan Huygens and his telescopes, Proceedings of the International Conference from discovery to Encounter, 13 – 17 April 2004, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, ESA, sp 1278, Paris 2004
^ Johar Huzefa (2009) Nothing But The Facts - Christiaan Huygens

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Christiaan Huygens

Primary sources, translations

Works by Christiaan Huygens at Project Gutenberg
- Treatise on Light translated into English by Silvanus P. Thompson, Project Gutenberg etext.
De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae or The Value of all Chances in Games of Fortune, 1657Christiaan Huygens' book on probability theory. An English translation published in 1714. Text pdf file.
Horologium oscillatorium (German translation, pub. 1913) on the pendulum clock
ΚΟΣΜΟΘΕΩΡΟΣ (Cosmotheoros). (English translation of Latin, pub. 1698; subtitled The celestial worlds discover'd: or, Conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets.)
Traité de la lumière or Treatise on light (English translation, pub. 1912 and again in 1962)
Systema Saturnium 1659 text a digital edition of Smithsonian Libraries
On Centrifugal Force (1703)
Huygens' work at WorldCat
Christiaan Huygens biography and achievements

Museums

Huygensmuseum Hofwijck in Voorburg, The Netherlands, where Huygens lived and worked.
Huygens Clocks exhibition from the Science Museum, London
Exhibition on Huygens in University Library Leiden (in Dutch)

Other

O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Christiaan Huygens", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
Huygens and music theory Huygens–Fokker Foundation —on Huygens' 31 equal temperament and how it has been used
Christiaan Huygens on the 25 Dutch Guilder banknote of the 1950s.

Persondata
NAME	Huygens, Christiaan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Physicist and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH	April 14, 1629
PLACE OF BIRTH	The Hague, Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH	July 8, 1690
PLACE OF DEATH	The Hague, Netherlands

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Christiaan Huygens

Contents

Life

French Academy of Sciences and Royal Society

Death

Scientific work

Mathematics

Probability theory

Physics

Mechanics

Wave theory

Optics

Clocks

Internal combustion and other inventions

Astronomy

Saturn's rings and Titan

Transit of Mercury

Extraterrestrial Life

Works

Portraits

During his lifetime

Named after Huygens

Science

Other

See also

References

Further reading

External links

Primary sources, translations

Museums

Other