{"id":60,"date":"2010-01-18T12:20:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T12:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dwc.knaw.nl\/?page_id=60"},"modified":"2012-02-10T16:27:15","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T16:27:15","slug":"inleiding","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/biografie\/christiaan-huygensweb\/inleiding\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><strong>Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695)<\/strong> i<\/strong>s generally regarded to  have been one of the most famous and influential scientists of the 17th  century. He made important discoveries in the sciences of mathematics,  astronomy and physics. Present day physicists still speak of &#8220;Huygens&#8217;  principle&#8221; when explaining the propagation of light. Huygens is also  known for his discovery of the rings and a moon of Saturn and for his  work in mechanics, in particular on centrifugal force, pendulums, and  the laws of percussion.<\/p>\n\n<p>Whereas up to that time, notions of  nature used to be rooted in a general philosophical framework, Huygens&#8217;  work is rather linked with his interest in technology and his efforts to  make useful or pleasant inventions. Together with his older brother  Constantijn Huygens (1628-1697) he made numerous telescope lenses which  many considered to be unsurpassed by those of other telescope makers. He  made or suggested many improvements to diverse devices, some of them  scientific (e.g. a micrometer for his telescopes), others of a more  playful nature, as coach suspensions and a laterna magica. His most  famous invention, closely linked to his theoretical work, was the  pendulum clock, which raised standards of accuracy to a considerable  degree.<\/p>\n\n<p>Huygens was famous already during his lifetime. When in  1666 Louis XIV founded the Royal French Academy of Sciences, Huygens  became the principal member. In this way, for many years he was able to  take a leading part in the scientific life of Europe. In his work,  Huygens was one of the pioneers of the so called &#8220;scientific  revolution&#8221;. Modern science was to a large degree established in the  seventeenth century, and Huygens was one of the persons who brought this  about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) is generally regarded to have been one of the most famous and influential scientists of the 17th century. He made important discoveries in the sciences of mathematics, astronomy and physics. Present day physicists still speak of &#8220;Huygens&#8217; principle&#8221; when explaining the propagation of light. Huygens is also known for his discovery of [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":58,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2395,"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/60\/revisions\/2395"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwc.knaw.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}