Â鶹APP

Christiaan Huygens. Picture By Bernard Vaillant

Top 10 Remarquable Facts about Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens was born in 1629, in Hague, Netherlands to a poet father, Constantijn Huygens, who was an important diplomat for the Princes of Orange.

Huygens was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor, who is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and a major figure in the scientific revolution.

Founded the wave theory of light discovered the true shape of the rings of Saturn and made original contributions to the science of dynamics—the study of the action of forces on bodies.

Let’s look at some remarkable facts about Huygens;

1. Huygens is best known for his wave theory of Light

Huygens supported the view that light was transmitted by means of the action of waves in a medium, and not by particles emanating from the source of the illumination.

By this model, he was able to ingeniously explain reflection, refraction, and even the complex phenomenon of double refraction observed in some crystals, such as Icelandic spar. He published his findings in Treatise on Light. 

Huygens’s views contrasted with those of Isaac Newton, who generally promulgated a view that light was a stream of particles. Newton’s support of a contrary hypothesis delayed the acceptance of Huygens’s for over a century.

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

2. Huygens developed a balance spring clock

Drawing of one of his first balance springs, attached to a balance wheel. By Johann Christoph Sturm

Huygens also developed a balance spring clock more or less contemporaneously with, though separately from, Rober 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.

Around 1859, Huygens uncovered a principle that comes close to Newton’s second law of motion. Huygens discovered that the force upon a moving body is proportional to the product of the square of the velocity and the distance traveled.

3. Huygens invented the Pendulum clock

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.

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”—that is, 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 displays an important astronomical clock owned and used by Huygens.

4. Christiaan discovered the rings of Saturn

The rings of Saturn were discovered by Huygens. By Christiaan. Wikimedia

In 1655, Huygens traveled to France and was awarded his doctorate at Angiers. Around this time, Huygens and his brother, Constantijn, Jr., worked together to perfect telescopes and were able to obtain clearer and more highly magnified images than their contemporaries.

As a result, Huygens discovered Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and Saturn’s planetary rings. In the same year, he observed and sketched the Orion Nebula.

Using his modern telescope, he succeeded in subdividing the nebula into different stars. He also discovered several interstellar nebulae and some double stars.

5. Christiaan published work on the quadrature of the circle

In 1651, Huygens published his first important work on the quadrature of the circle, the task of finding the dimensions of a square with the same area as a given circle.

He also addressed a similar problem with respect to the ellipse and the hyperbola. His results contradicted those of a well-recognized contemporary, in that Huygens announced that “Pi” was an irrational number.

6. Huygens enrolled at Leiden University for Mathematics

Leiden University. Picture by C messier

At the age of 16, Huygens enrolled in the University of Leiden, where he studied mathematics and law from 1645-1647.

He then transferred to the College of Breda to continue his study of those subjects. It wasn’t long before he would begin to make his mark on the world of science and mathematics, publishing his first papers, which addressed problems in mathematics, in 1651 and 1654.

7. Huygens developed an improved Telescope

Huygens’ telescope was set up at the Old Observatory in Leiden. Picture By Synths

Early publications by Huygens focused on mathematical problems, but in 1654 he turned his attention to the telescope.

With the help of his brother, he came up with a better method of grinding and polishing the lenses, providing greater clarity.

He turned one of his improved telescopes toward the planet Saturn, which had shown an elongated appearance in less accurate observations. Huygens determined that the distorted planet boasted several rings. 

8. Christiaan discovered a large moon orbiting the planet

Huygens also discovered a large moon orbiting the planet, which he named Titan. When the European Space Agency parachuted a probe onto the moon in 2005 to study its atmosphere, they named it after the Dutch astronomer.

Titan is the best possible source of life in the solar system. Fittingly, Huygens wrote one of the earliest discussions on extraterrestrial life, published just after his death.

9. Huygens made contributions to the fields of mathematics and physics

Huygens made many contributions to the fields of mathematics and physics (called “natural philosophy” at the time).

He formulated laws to describe the elastic collision between two bodies, wrote a quadratic equation for what would become Newton’s second law of motion, wrote the first treatise about probability theory, and derived the formula for centripetal force.

However, he is remembered for his optics work. He may have been the inventor of the magic lantern, an early type of image projector.

10. His father Constantijn was rich and a Diplomat

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687). Picture by Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt

Constantijn was a diplomat and advisor to the House of Orange in addition to being a poet and a musician.

He corresponded widely with intellectuals across Europe; his friends included Galileo Galilei, Marin, and Descartes.

Christiaan was educated at home until the age of sixteen.  From a young age liked to play with miniatures of mills and other machines.

His father gave him a liberal education: he studied languages, history, geography, mathematics, and music but also dancing, fencing, and horse riding.