Sir Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem, was a Dutch Golden Age poet and composer. He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens.
Huygens, painted by Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt in 1641
Susanna van Baerle (1599-1637), and her husband Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), painted by Jacob van Campen
Hofwijck, the country retreat of Huygens and his family.
Drawing of the Zee-straet
Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor who is regarded as a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. In physics, Huygens made seminal contributions to optics and mechanics, while as an astronomer he studied the rings of Saturn and discovered its largest moon, Titan. As an engineer and inventor, he improved the design of telescopes and invented the pendulum clock, the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. A talented mathematician and physicist, his works contain the first idealization of a physical problem by a set of mathematical parameters, and the first mathematical and mechanistic explanation of an unobservable physical phenomenon.
Huygens by Caspar Netscher (1671), Museum Boerhaave, Leiden
Christiaan Huygens, relief by Jean-Jacques Clérion (c. 1670).
Huygens, right of centre, from L'établissement de l'Académie des Sciences et fondation de l'observatoire, 1666 by Henri Testelin (c. 1675).
Hofwijck, Huygens's summer home; now a museum.
