Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch mathematician and physicist. He was born in 1629 and died in 1695. He studied at Leyden, and at Breda, where he went through a course of civil law from 1646-48. He made several journeys to Denmark, France, and England; in 1666 settled at the invitation of Colbert in Paris, where he remained until 1681, when he returned to Holland on account of his health.
Among his most important contributions to science are his investigations on the oscillations of the pendulum - he invented the pendulum clock, and his System of Saturn, in which he first proved that the ring completely surrounds the planet, and determined the inclination of its plane to that of the ecliptic. In 1690 he published important treatises on light and on weight. His Traite de la Lumiere was founded on the undulation theory, but in consequence of the prevalence of the Newtonian theory it was long neglected until later researches established its credit. Research Christiaan Huygens
In music, the term undulation describes the tremulous tone produced by a peculiar pressure of the finger on a string, as of a violin. The term is also used to describe the pulsation caused by the vibrating together of two tones not quite in unison. Research Undulation
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Abbreviations
Research Christiaan Huygens
