Christiaan Huygens was born on 14 April 1629 in The Hague. A Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer, Huygens was among the foremost scientists of the seventeenth century. He proposed the wave theory of light, discovered Saturn's moon Titan and correctly described the planet's rings, and invented the pendulum clock, which greatly improved the accuracy of timekeeping. His book on probability was one of the first on the subject, and he worked out the physics of centrifugal force and collisions. He lived for years in Paris at the court of Louis XIV and was a founding member of the French Academy of Sciences, and he corresponded with Newton and Leibniz.
Before and after
- 12 January 1628Birth of Charles Perrault
- from May 1628 to August 1628Siege of Stralsund
- 1629Founding of Lynn
- 1629Founding of Melrose
- 14 April 1629Birth of Christiaan Huygens
- 17 August 1629Birth of John III Sobieski
- 1630Founding of Cambridge
- 1630Founding of Somerville
- 1630Founding of Everett
More in Science & technology
- 15 February 1564Birth of Galileo Galilei
- 24 February 1582Pope Gregory XIII reforms the calendar
- 25 December 1642Birth of Isaac Newton
- 1654Magdeburg hemispheres
- October 1684Leibniz publishes the first paper on calculus
- 28 August 1749Birth of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The era
This moment belongs to the Early modern world (1500 CE to 1760 CE), voyages, printing and new ideas. You can also browse everything in the 17th century.