page_title: Christiaan Huygens
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Christiaan Huygens / Early life
context_page_description: Christiaan Huygens FRS, also spelled Huyghens, was a Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and a major figure in the scientific revolution. In physics, Huygens made groundbreaking contributions in optics and mechanics, while as an astronomer he is chiefly known for his studies of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan. As an inventor, he improved the design of the telescope with the invention of the Huygenian eyepiece. His most famous invention, however, was the pendulum clock in 1656, which was a breakthrough in timekeeping and became the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. Huygens was an outstanding mathematician and, because he was the first to transfer mathematical inquiry to describe unobservable physical phenomena, he has been called the first theoretical physicist and the founder of modern mathematical physics.
  In 1659, Huygens was the first to derive geometrically the now standard formulae for the centripetal force and centrifugal force in his work De vi centrifuga. The formulae played a central role in classical mechanics.
context_section_description: Christiaan Huygens was born on 14 April 1629 in The Hague, into a rich and influential Dutch family, the second son of Constantijn Huygens. Christiaan was named after his paternal grandfather. His mother was Suzanna van Baerle. She died in 1637, shortly after the birth of Huygens' 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, and also a poet and musician. His friends included Galileo Galilei, Marin Mersenne and René Descartes. Huygens was educated at home until turning sixteen years old. He liked to play with miniatures of mills and other machines. His father gave him a liberal education: he studied languages and music, history and geography, mathematics, logic and rhetoric, but also dancing, fencing and horse riding.
  In 1644 Huygens had as his mathematical tutor Jan Jansz de Jonge Stampioen, who assigned the 15-year-old a demanding reading list on contemporary science. Descartes was impressed by his skills in geometry.
caption: Portrait of Huygens' father (centre) and his five children (Christiaan at right). Mauritshuis, The Hague.
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