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Christiaan Huygens
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Christiaan Huygens ( in English, in Dutch) (April 14, 1629 – July 8, 1695) was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies, investigations and inventions related to time keeping, and studies of both optics and centrifugal force.
Life and work
Christiaan Huygens was born in The Hague, the son of Constantijn Huygens, a friend of René Descartes. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange in Breda before turning to science.
Huygens achieved note for his arguments that light consisted of waves, which became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality.
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Christiaan Huygens ( in English, in Dutch) (April 14, 1629 – July 8, 1695) was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist, and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies, investigations and inventions related to time keeping, and studies of both optics and centrifugal force.
Life and work
Christiaan Huygens was born in The Hague, the son of Constantijn Huygens, a friend of René Descartes. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange in Breda before turning to science.
Huygens achieved note for his arguments that light consisted of waves, which became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality. He generally receives credit for his role in the development of modern calculus and his original observations on sound perception (see Repetition Pitch). 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. 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. 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.
After Blaise Pascal encouraged him to do so, Huygens wrote the first book on probability theory, which he had published in 1657.
He also worked on the construction of accurate clocks, suitable for naval navigation. In 1658 he published a book on this topic called Horologium. In fact his invention on Christmas 1656, the pendulum clock (patented 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 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 "under the privilege" -i.e. based on a license from Huygens- by Salomon Coster in The Hague. The oldest known Huygens style pendulum clock is dated 1657 and can be seen at the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden, 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.
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.
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.
Huygens speculated in detail about life on other planets. In his book Cosmotheoros, further entitled The celestial worlds discover'd: or, conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets, he imagined a universe brimming with life, much of it very similar to life on 17th-century Earth. The liberal climate in the Netherlands of that time not only allowed but encouraged such speculation. In sharp contrast, philosopher Giordano Bruno, who also believed in many inhabited worlds, was burned at the stake by the Italian authorities for his beliefs in 1600.
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.
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 July 8, 1695. He was buried there at the .
Named after Huygens
- 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
- : Dutch study guild for the studies Mathemathics and Computer Science at the Delft University of Technology
- : Home of the Physics department at Leiden University, The Netherlands
- : 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.
- , High School located in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
- The Christiaan Huygens, a ship of the Nederland Line.
Selected works
- Christiani Hugenii Zuilichemii, dum viveret Zelhemii toparchae, opuscula posthuma ... (pub. 1728)
Alternate title — Opera reliqua
a work in the area of optics and physics
- (German translation, pub. 1913)
Alternate title — Die pendeluhr, Horologium oscillatorium, von Christiaan Huygens
a work in the area of timepieces
- . (English translation of Latin, pub. 1698)
Alternate title — Cosmotheoros.
Alternate title — The celestial worlds discover'd: or, Conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets.
a work relating theories of life on other worlds
- (English translation, pub. 1912 and again in 1962)
Alternate title — .
a work in the area of optics and physics
See also
Further reading
- Andriesse, C.D., 2005, Huygens The Man Behind the Principle. Foreword by Sally Miedema. Cambridge University Press.
- Yoder, J G., 2005, "Book on the pendulum clock" in Ivor Grattan-Guinness, ed., Landmark Writings in Western Mathematics. Elsevier: 33-45.
- . Retrieved 2005-03-30.
External links
- translated into English by Silvanus P. Thompson, Project Gutenberg etext.
- Christiaan Huygens' book on probability theory. An English translation published in 1714. Text pdf file.
- in Voorburg, The Netherlands, where Huygens lived and worked.
- exhibition from the Science Museum, London
- Huygens–Fokker Foundation —on Huygens' 31 equal temperament and how it has been used
- a digital edition of Smithsonian Libraries
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