Christiaan Huygens's Life And Accomplishments

Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch Mathematician and Scientist in the late 17th century. It becomes difficult at this stage to be any more specific than that, as his achievements are in fields so varied and so far-reaching that the only description of him that fits is ‘polymath’. Indeed, we are only learning of some achievements today, as his reticence to publish many of his works kept many of them from seeing the light of day for quite some time (Igorevich).
He was born in the cold April of 1626 in The Hague, located it what is now the Netherlands, to an influential Dutch family. He was the families’ third and penultimate child, as his mother passed away in the process of giving birth to his younger sister. His father, Constantijn Huygens, was a well-known poet and composer and advisor to two of the Princes of Orange. Constantijn was a very well-educated man, and he passed those qualities off to his son. Christiaan was homeschooled until the age of 16, …show more content…
This might have been the case too, if it weren’t for a series of coincidences leading to Huygens’s scientific debut. Firstly, he was introduced to Fermat’s Differential Geometry by a friend and mentor, and began to study this in great detail. Secondly, his father much of his influence in politics, so any residual influence Christiaan would have had from his father was lost. Lastly, and most importantly, Christiaan saw himself as a scientist, so he set himself onto that path. After a dispute caused by a duel between his brother and another student, Christiaan continued his education at the College of Orange in Breda (Bos). During this time, he began corresponding with many established scholars, most notably Marin Mersenne (the namesake of the Mersenne Primes) before his untimely death and Pierre de Fermat (of Fermat's