page_title: Christiaan Huygens
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Christiaan Huygens / Works
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context_section_description: 1649 – De iis quae liquido supernatant (About the parts above the water, unpublished)
  1651 – Cyclometriae
  1651 – Theoremata de quadratura hyperboles, ellipsis et circuli, in Oeuvres Complètes, Tome XI, link from Internet Archive.
  1654 – De circuli magnitudine inventa
  1656 – De Saturni Luna observatio nova (About the new observation of the moon of Saturn – discovery of Titan)
  1656 – De motu corporum ex percussione, published only in 1703
  1657 – De ratiociniis in ludo aleae = Van reeckening in spelen van geluck (translated by Frans van Schooten)
  1659 – Systema saturnium (on the planet Saturn)
  1659 – De vi centrifuga (Concerning the centrifugal force), published in 1703
  1673 – Horologium oscillatorium sive de motu pendularium (theory and design of the pendulum clock, dedicated to Louis XIV of France) – View at the HathiTrust Digital Library
  1684 – Astroscopia Compendiaria tubi optici molimine liberata (compound telescopes without a tube)
  1685 – Memoriën aengaende het slijpen van glasen tot verrekijckers (How to grind telescope lenses)
  1686 – Old Dutch: Kort onderwijs aengaende het gebruijck der horologiën tot het vinden der lenghten van Oost en West (How to use clocks to establish the longitude)
  1690 – Traité de la lumière (translated by Silvanus P. Thompson)
  1690 – Discours de la cause de la pesanteur (Discourse about gravity, from 1669?)
  1691 – Lettre touchant le cycle harmonique (Rotterdam, concerning the 31-tone system)
  1698 – Cosmotheoros (solar system, cosmology, life in the universe)
  1703 – Opuscula posthuma including
  De motu corporum ex percussione (Concerning the motions of colliding bodies – contains the first correct laws for collision, dating from 1656).
  Descriptio automati planetarii (description and design of a planetarium)
  1724 – Novus cyclus harmonicus (Leiden, after Huygens' death)
  1728 – Christiani Hugenii Zuilichemii, dum viveret Zelhemii toparchae, opuscula posthuma ... (pub. 1728) Alternate title: Opera reliqua, concerning optics and physics
  1888–1950 – Huygens, Christiaan. Oeuvres complètes. The Hague Complete work, editors D. Bierens de Haan (tome=deel 1–5), J. Bosscha (6–10), D.J. Korteweg (11–15), A.A. Nijland (15), J.A. Vollgraf (16–22).
  Tome I: Correspondance 1638–1656 (1888).
  Tome II: Correspondance 1657–1659 (1889).
  Tome III: Correspondance 1660–1661 (1890).
  Tome IV: Correspondance 1662–1663 (1891).
  Tome V: Correspondance 1664–1665 (1893).
  Tome VI: Correspondance 1666–1669 (1895).
  Tome VII: Correspondance 1670–1675 (1897).
  Tome VIII: Correspondance 1676–1684 (1899).
  Tome IX: Correspondance 1685–1690 (1901).
  Tome X: Correspondance 1691–1695 (1905).
  Tome XI: Travaux mathématiques 1645–1651 (1908).
  Tome XII: Travaux mathématiques pures 1652–1656 (1910).
  Tome XIII, Fasc. I: Dioptrique 1653, 1666 (1916).
  Tome XIII, Fasc. II: Dioptrique 1685–1692 (1916).
  Tome XIV: Calcul des probabilités. Travaux de mathématiques pures 1655–1666 (1920).
  Tome XV: Observations astronomiques. Système de Saturne. Travaux astronomiques 1658–1666 (1925).
  Tome XVI: Mécanique jusqu’à 1666. Percussion. Question de l'existence et de la perceptibilité du mouvement absolu. Force centrifuge (1929).
  Tome XVII: L’horloge à pendule de 1651 à 1666. Travaux divers de physique, de mécanique et de technique de 1650 à 1666. Traité des couronnes et des parhélies (1662 ou 1663) (1932).
  Tome XVIII: L'horloge à pendule ou à balancier de 1666 à 1695. Anecdota (1934).
  Tome XIX: Mécanique théorique et physique de 1666 à 1695. Huygens à l'Académie royale des sciences (1937).
  Tome XX: Musique et mathématique. Musique. Mathématiques de 1666 à 1695 (1940).
  Tome XXI: Cosmologie (1944).
  Tome XXII: Supplément à la correspondance. Varia. Biographie de Chr. Huygens. Catalogue de la vente des livres de Chr. Huygens (1950).
caption: Possible depiction of Huygens right of center, detail from L'établissement de l'Académie des Sciences et fondation de l'observatoire, 1666 by Henri Testelin. Colbert presents the members of the newly founded Académie des Sciences to king Louis XIV of France, around 1675.
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