Huygens he belonged to a wealthy and distinguished middle-class family. His father, Constantijn Huygens, a diplomat, Latinist, and poet, was a friend and correspondent for many leading intellectual figures of the time, including the scientist and philosopher René Descartes. From an early age, Huygens He showed a marked inclination for mechanics and a talent for drawing and mathematics. Some of his early efforts in geometry impressed Descartes, who occasionally visited the Huygens home.
In 1645 he entered the University of Leiden, where he studied mathematics and law. Two years later he entered the College of Breda, amid a furious controversy over the philosophy of Descartes. Even if Huygens He later rejected some of the Cartesian principles, including the identification of the extension and the body, always asserting that mechanical explanations were essential in science, a fact that later had an important influence on his mathematical interpretation of light and gravitation.
Using his improved telescope, he discovered a satellite of Saturn in March 1655 and distinguished the stellar components of the Orion nebula in 1656. His interest, as an astronomer, in accurate time measurement led him to discover the pendulum as a regulator of the watches, as described in their Horologium (1658).
The most important event of the years Huygens in Paris was the publication in 1673 of his Horologium Oscillatorium. This brilliant work contained a theory on the mathematics of curvatures, as well as complete solutions to dynamics problems such as the derivation of the formula for the time of oscillation of the simple pendulum, the oscillation of a body about a stationary axis, and the law of centrifugal force for uniform circular motion. Some of the results were given without testing in an appendix, and Huygens’ full tests were not published until after his death.
The treatment of rotating bodies was based in part on an ingenious application of the principle that in any system of bodies the center of gravity could never spontaneously rise above its initial position. Previously, Huygens he had applied the same principle to the treatment of the problem of collisions, for which he had obtained a definitive solution in the case of perfectly elastic bodies as early as 1656, although his results remained unpublished until 1669.
A serious illness in 1681 prompted him to return to Holland, where he intended to stay alone temporarily. But the death in 1683 of his patron, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who had been Louis XIV’s chief adviser, and the increasingly reactionary policy of the King, culminating in the revocation (1685) of the Edict of Nantes, which he had granted certain liberties to the Protestants, influenced against their return to Paris.
The I tried de la Lumière Huygens’s (Treatise on Light), largely completed in 1678, was also published in 1690. In it he again showed his need for mechanical explanations in his discussion of the nature of light.
As a mathematician, Huygens he had a great talent rather than a genius of the first order. He sometimes found it difficult to follow the innovations of Leibniz and others, but was admired by Newton for his love of old synthetic methods. For most of the 18th century, his work on both dynamics and light was overshadowed by Newton’s. In gravitation, his theory was never taken seriously and remains only of historical interest today. But his work on rotating bodies and his contributions to the theory of light were of enduring importance. Forgotten until the beginning of the 19th century, the latter appear today as one of the most brilliant and original contributions to modern science and will always be remembered for the principle that bears their name.
The last five years of the life of Huygens they were marked by continued ill health, increasing feelings of loneliness and melancholy. He made the final corrections at will in March 1695 and died after much suffering months later that same year.