Leiden University Libraries and Brill Publishers present publication of the fully digitized personal archive of Christiaan Huygens

1 december 2016

Leiden University Libraries and Brill Publishers have joined forces to digitize this important archive, allowing online access to a large community of scholars via BrillOnline Primary Sources. The Codices Hugeniani Online (COHU) offers the fully digitized archive of Christiaan Huygens (1629 – 1695), held at Leiden University Library. The archive includes notebooks and loose leafs with texts in the field of astronomy, mechanics, mathematics and music, as well as correspondence and annotated books.

Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist. He published major studies on mechanics and optics, and a pioneer work on games of chance. He is famous for his discovery of the rings of Saturn and its moon Titan, and for inventing the pendulum clock.

For over three centuries, many scholars have made the Codices Hugeniani the object of their research. The contents of the archive have been made partly accessible through the well-known Oeuvres complètes (a 19-volume 19th-century reference work). More recently, the Codices Hugeniani were described in detail by Dr. Joella Yoder in her Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Christiaan Huygens (Brill, 2013). With COHU the full archive’s contents are now easily accessible for the first time.

Mart van Duijn, Curator of Western Manuscripts of Leiden University Libraries, commented: “Codices Hugeniani Online is not only a great tool for researchers because of the different search options it offers, it is also a treasure trove of magnificent documents and drawings of the discoveries and inventions made by Christiaan Huygens.”

Codices Hugeniani Online is a subscription-only service, and accessible through http://primarysources.brillonline.com/browse/codices-hugeniani.