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The Boards of the Association of the KIVI Department of the History of Engineering and of the Histechnica Association have the pleasure of inviting you to attend an online lecture to be given by Mr Hugh Aldersey-Williams, entitled:

Dutch Light - Christiaan Huygens, The Making of Science

Christiaan Huygens by Caspar Netscher 1671

Programme:

19.30:00: You can log on via MS Teams from this point onwards

20:00: Welcome and introduction

20.05:00: Lecture by Mr Hugh Aldersey-Williams (Author of the biography on Christiaan Huygens). The lecture will be delivered in English

21:00: Short break

21:05: Closing discussion

21:30: End of lecture

Registration is required to attend this lecture.

How to register

- KIVI members should register via the KIVI website

- Interested parties who are not KIVI members are also welcome and can register there. Please note that there are no costs involved.

Summary of the lecture

Christiaan Huygens (1629- 1695) was a maker, an observer and a thinker, who made crucial contributions to astronomy, optics, probability and mechanics. He laid the foundations of modern science and was far ahead of his time in his theories.

Most people know Christiaan Huygens mainly for inventing the application of the pendulum in time measurement, which greatly improved the accuracy of measurement. He is also known for discovering and explaining Saturn's ring, which he studied with home-made telescopes.

Hugh Aldersey-Williams tells us the story of one of the Netherlands' most important, but also most underestimated and underappreciated scientists. In the talk, he takes us on a journey through Huygens' time and reconstructs the origins of modern science in Europe based on Christiaan's work.

What makes Christiaan special is that he was a European scientist who spent a lot of time in both France and England. In France, he was involved in the founding of the Académie Royale des Science in Paris, and in England he was one of the first members of the Royal Society of London.

As an Englishman, Hugh concludes that Christiaan was the greatest scientist in seventeenth-century Europe!

Information about the speaker, Mr Hugh Aldersey-Williams

Hugh Aldersey-Williams (born 1959) studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. He wrote several popular science books such as Periodic Tales which was a bestseller and has been translated into ten languages. In 2013, he published the book Anatomies, in which he takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery along all parts of our body. In 2016, the critically acclaimed The Tide - Wisdom and science of ebb and flow was published. The present book - Dutch Light - was published by publisher Picador in September 2020 and was immediately translated into Dutch as Een Eeuw van Licht - Het leven van Christiaan Huygens, by Thomas Rap. This book received full-page rave reviews in almost all major national newspapers.

Upcoming activities

  • thursday 9 September 2021 "outdoor day" Zeeuws Vlaanderen, 09:45 to about 19:00
  • thursday 23 September 2021 at 19:30 MS Teams lecture (see above)
  • saturday 23 October at 11:00 am lecture Prof Dr P. Breedveld: "Mechanical calculators"
  • saturday 13 November at 11:00 lecture G.W. de Graaf: "De Indische Mijnspoorwegen"
  • december 2021 lecture prof. dr. P.G. Steeneken: "Dynamics at the nanoscale"