Christiaan Huygens
Dutch physicist and astronomer (1629–1695) who proposed the wave theory of light in Traité de la lumière (1678) and formulated the Huygens construction of secondary wavelets. Full physicist entry in a later session.
Definition
This is a placeholder entry. Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer, and physicist (1629–1695) whose contributions to optics include the wave theory of light presented in Traité de la lumière (1678) and the Huygens construction of secondary wavelets, which remains the first clean statement of what is now called Huygens's principle. He also built the first pendulum clock, discovered Titan, explained Saturn's rings, and derived the centripetal acceleration formula — all in addition to his optical work.
The full physicist entry will appear in a later session. For the specific optical concepts that reference him here — the wave theory, the secondary-wavelet construction, the derivation of Snell's law from wave-front propagation — see the glossary entries for huygens-principle and snells-law, and the topic treatment in §09.8 diffraction-and-the-double-slit.