Christiaan Huygens was a brilliant dutch physicist who possibly ranks in the class of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz and yet, of those, the one so few people (in the U.S.) seem to know about. For what it's worth, he wrote an early version of what became Newton's second law of motion (no, Newton did not come up with this stuff all by himself), invented the pendulum clock, demonstrated that light has wave properties, independently discovered the balance spring, discovered coupled oscillations (see also!), solved the tautochrone problem (which was critical to the creation of a useful pendulum clock), used an early geometric form of calculus predating Newton, developed the theory and formula for centripetal force, wrote the first lengthy work on probability, designed a large tubeless telescope, was the first to understand that Saturn has a ring around it, discovered Saturn's planet Titan, was the first to draw the Orion Nebula, designed an early internal combustion engine that was intended to work with gunpowder, and designed a pocket watch (an outgrowth of the balance spring), among many other inventions. His father, grandfather, and brother were also very successful (his father, though Dutch, was knighted by both England and France and is historically one of the Netherlands most famous poets as well as a composer and was a friend of John Donne and an acquaintance of Rembrandt and Descartes (who lived in the Netherlands for 20 years)).
So, okay, here's the deal: it turns out pretty much everybody who isn't Dutch has been mispronouncing his name all along. According to Wikipedia it's pronounced like this; according to the video below it's {Huh}{clear your throat or something}{ens}. Also, while we're on it, Euler is pronounced {oiler}, Leibnitz is pronounced {laip}{nits}, and Newton is pronounced {New}{ton}. Dr. Lewin, below, is right: I've got no idea how to say it.
No comments:
Post a Comment