Born in The Hague in 1629, Christiaan Huygens was a famous Dutchman for his development of advanced pendulum clocks (1659).
Huygens also contributed significantly to physics: In 1656, he derived the conservation of momentum law, in 1659, he established the idea of centrifugal forces, and in 1678 in Paris, he developed his famous wave theory of light.
Huygens left France in about 1686 for religious reasons, fearing persecution as he was a protestant, visited England in 1689 and then retired to The Hague, where he died in 1695 at age 66.
Huygens was also in 1656 the first effective observer of the Orion Nebula; he delineated the bright region still known by his name, and detected the multiple character of its nuclear star.
The invention dates from 1656; on the 16th of June 1657 Huygens presented his first "pendulum-clock" to the states-general; and the Horologium, containing a description of the requisite mechanism, was published in 1658.
This resolution of the original wave is the well-known "Principle of Huygens", and by its means he was enabled to prove the fundamental laws of optics, and to assign the correct construction for the direction of the extraordinary ray in uniaxial crystals.
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