The immediate results of the clearer definition obtained were the detection of a satellite to Saturn (the sixth in order of distance from its primary), and the resolution into their true form of the abnormal appendages to that planet. But the difficulties interposed by spherical and chromatic aberration had arrested progress in that direction until, in 1655, Huygens, working with his brother Constantijn, hit upon a new method of grinding and polishing lenses. The improvement of the telescope was justly regarded as a sine qua non for the advancement of astronomical knowledge. This first essay ( Exetasis quadraturae circuli, Leiden, 1651) was quickly succeeded by his Theoremata de quadratura hyperboles, ellipsis, et circuli while, in a treatise entitled De circuli magnitudine inventa, he made, three years later, the closest approximation so far obtained to the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle.Īnother class of subjects was now to engage his attention. In 1649 he accompanied the mission of Henry, count of Nassau, to Denmark, and in 1651 entered the lists of science as an assailant of the unsound system of quadratures adopted by Gregory of St Vincent. His mathematical bent, however, soon diverted him from legal studies, and the perusal of some of his earliest theorems enabled Descartes to predict his future greatness. van Schooten, and completed in the juridical school of Breda. From his father he received the rudiments of his education, which was continued at Leiden under A. He was the second son of Sir Constantijn Huygens. CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS (1629-1695), Dutch mathematician, mechanician, astronomer and physicist, was born at the Hague on the 14th of April 1629.
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