Huygens, Christian

[person]

Dutch mathematician born in The Hague (1629-1695). Huygens ground and polished his own telescope lenses, and in 1655, he detected the first moon of Saturn using one of them. He also proposed the theory that Saturn has rings. Huygens worked on a variety of other mathematical, scientific, and engineering problems, including the development of accurate pendulum clocks and gravitational theory. In 1678, he published his "Theory of Light" in which he argued that light is a wave, not a particle.