Christiaan Huygens

Born: 14 April 1629
The Hague, Dutch Republic (32 years old right now, 1661)
Education: University of Leiden
University of Angers
Known for: Aerial telescope
Balance spring
Birefringence
Centrifugal force
Centripetal force
Collision formulae
Discovery of Titan
Explanation of Saturn's rings
Evolute
Gambler's ruin
Huygens's engine
Huygenian eyepiece
Huygens–Fresnel principle
Huygens's lemniscate
Huygens–Steiner theorem
Huygens's tritone
Involute
Injection locking
Repetition pitch
Magic lantern
Pendulum clock
Problem of points
Tautochrone curve
Tractrix
Wave theory
31 equal temperament musical tuning
Fields: Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Mechanics, Horology
Workplaces: Royal Society of London
French Academy of Sciences
Academic advisors: Frans van Schooten

Huygens never married.

Christiaan Huygens was born into a wealthy, influential Dutch family in The Hague on 14 April 1629, the second son of Constantijn Huygens. Christiaan was named after his paternal grandfather. His mother, Suzanna van Baerle, died shortly after giving birth to Huygens's sister. The couple had five children: Constantijn (1628), Christiaan (1629), Lodewijk (1631), Philips (1632) and Suzanna (1637).
Constantijn Huygens was a diplomat and advisor to the House of Orange, in addition to being a poet and a musician. He corresponded widely with intellectuals across Europe, including Galileo Galilei, Marin Mersenne, and René Descartes. Christiaan was educated at home until the age of sixteen, and from a young age liked to play with miniatures of mills and other machines. He received a liberal education from his father, studying languages, music, history, geography, mathematics, logic, and rhetoric, alongside dancing, fencing and horse riding.
In 1644, Huygens had as his mathematical tutor Jan Jansz Stampioen, who assigned the 15-year-old a demanding reading list on contemporary science. Descartes was later impressed by his skills in geometry, as was Mersenne, who christened him the "new Archimedes".

At sixteen years of age, Constantijn sent Huygens to study law and mathematics at Leiden University, where he enrolled from May 1645 to March 1647. Frans van Schooten Jr., professor at Leiden's Engineering School, became private tutor to Huygens and his elder brother, Constantijn Jr., replacing Stampioen on the advice of Descartes. Van Schooten brought Huygens's mathematical education up to date, particularly on the work of Viète, Descartes, and Fermat.
After two years, starting in March 1647, Huygens continued his studies at the newly founded Orange College, in Breda, where his father was a curator. Constantijn Huygens was closely involved in the new College, which lasted only to 1669; the rector was André Rivet. Christiaan Huygens lived at the home of the jurist Johann Henryk Dauber while attending college, and had mathematics classes with the English lecturer John Pell. His time in Breda ended around the time when his brother Lodewijk, who was enrolled at the school, duelled with another student. Huygens left Breda after completing his studies in August 1649 and had a stint as a diplomat on a mission with Henry, Duke of Nassau. After stays at Bentheim and Flensburg in Germany, he visited Copenhagen and Helsingør in Denmark. Huygens hoped to cross the Øresund to see Descartes in Stockholm but Descartes died before he could do that.
Although his father Constantijn had wished his son Christiaan to be a diplomat, circumstances kept him from becoming so. The First Stadtholderless Period that began in 1650 meant that the House of Orange was no longer in power, removing Constantijn's influence. Further, he realized that his son had no interest in such a career

Huygens generally wrote in French or Latin. In 1646, while still a college student at Leiden, he began a correspondence with his father's friend, Marin Mersenne, who died soon afterwards in 1648. Mersenne wrote to Constantijn on his son's talent for mathematics, and flatteringly compared him to Archimedes on 3 January 1647.
The letters show Huygens's early interest in mathematics. In October 1646 he wrote about the shape of a suspension bridge, demonstrating that a hanging chain is not a parabola, as Galileo thought.
In 1654, Huygens returned to his father's house in The Hague and was able to devote himself entirely to research. The family had another house, not far away at Hofwijck, and he spent time there during the summer. Despite being very active, his scholarly life did not allow him to escape bouts of depression.
Subsequently, Huygens developed a broad range of correspondents, though with some difficulty after 1648 due to the five-year Fronde in France. Visiting Paris in 1655, Huygens called on Ismael Boulliau to introduce himself, who took him to see Claude Mylon. The Parisian group of savants that had gathered around Mersenne held together into the 1650s, and Mylon, who had assumed the secretarial role, took some trouble to keep Huygens in touch. Through Pierre de Carcavi Huygens corresponded in 1656 with Pierre de Fermat, whom he admired greatly. The experience was bittersweet and somewhat puzzling since it became clear that Fermat had dropped out of the research mainstream, and his priority claims could probably not be made good in some cases. Besides, Huygens was looking by then to apply mathematics to physics, while Fermat's concerns ran to purer topics.

Like some of his contemporaries, Huygens was often slow to commit his results and discoveries to print, preferring to disseminate his work through letters instead. In his early days, his mentor Frans van Schooten provided technical feedback and was cautious for the sake of his reputation.
Between 1651 and 1657, Huygens published a number of works that showed his talent for mathematics and his mastery of classical and analytical geometry, increasing his reach and reputation among mathematicians. Around the same time, Huygens began to question Descartes's laws of collision, which were largely wrong, deriving the correct laws algebraically and later by way of geometry. He showed that, for any system of bodies, the centre of gravity of the system remains the same in velocity and direction, which Huygens called the conservation of "quantity of movement". While others at the time were studying impact, Huygens's theory of collisions was more general.
In addition to his mathematical and mechanical works, Huygens made important scientific discoveries: he was the first to identify Titan as one of Saturn's moons on 25 March 1655, invented the pendulum clock in 1657, and explained Saturn's strange appearance as due to a ring in 1659; all these discoveries brought him fame across Europe. On 3 May 1661, Huygens, together with astronomer Thomas Streete and Richard Reeve, observed the planet Mercury transit over the Sun using Reeve's telescope in London.

The Montmor Academy, started in the mid-1650s, was the form the old Mersenne circle took after his death. Huygens took part in its debates and supported those favouring experimental demonstration as a check on amateurish attitudes.

Furthermore, it was at this time that the first coffee houses took Europe by storm, where men would spend hours engaged in heated political debates over a cup of this new, exotic drink and a pipe of tobacco.

Long curly dark hair, blue expressive eyes, small mole under right eye, thin lips, long straight nose, medium height, medium built