Christiaan Huygens
APR 14, 2015
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.030942
It’s the birthday of Christiaan Huygens, who was born in 1629 in the Hague, the Netherlands. Huygens studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden. His father, a diplomat, wanted his son to follow him in the profession. Huygens, however, chose to become a scientist. His interests were wide. He invented the pendulum clock, discovered Saturn’s moon Titan, and proposed that light is a wave. Huygens’s last work, Cosmotheoros, explored the possibility of life on other planets, which, he argued, would depend on the presence of water, as is the case on Earth.
Date in History: 14 April 1629
© 2015 American Institute of Physics
