A fascinating biography of one of the finest renaissance minds. Huygens was a polymath almost without equal, credited with discovering the rings of Saturn, the moon Titan, the invention of the pendulum clock and groundbreaking studies on optics and centrifugal forces, this study goes beyond these discoveries to find out more about the man and what made him strive to know more. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern...

CHRISTIAN HUYGENS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY By A. E. BELL. PREFACE: THERE can be no doubt that Christian Huygens was one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time. A man who transformed the telescope from being a toy into a powerful instrument of in vestigation, and this as a consequence of profound optical researches; who discovered Saturn's ring and the satellite Titan; who drew attention to the Nebula in Orion; who studied the prob lem of gravity in a quantitative manner, arriving at correct ideas about the effects of centrifugal force and the shape of...