HUYGENS, CHRISTIAAN

HUYGENS, Christiaan: translation

(1629–1695)

Mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the son of Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), who was an advisor of the stadtholders and himself a gifted poet and composer. Christiaan Huygens’s fundamental scien tificresearch was in the fields of mechanics (gravity), optics (waves), and music. Although his birth and death were both in The Hague, most of his life was spent in Paris, where Huygens was an active member of the Academie des Sciences.