Huygens, Christiaan (hoi´gens), 1629-95,
Dutch
mathematician and physicist; son of Constantijn
HUYGENS. He improved telescopic lenses, was the first to
interpret correctly the ring structure surrounding
SATURN, and discovered its satellite Titan. He was the
first to use a pendulum in clocks. Huygens developed a
wave theory of LIGHT opposed to Isaac NEWTON's
corpuscular theory and formulated Huygens's principle
of light waves, which holds that every point on a wave
front is a source of new waves. He discovered the
polarization of light (see POLARIZED LIGHT)
in calcite.
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