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Started Jan 2, 2004
Last Update December 24, 2009

Christiaan Huygens 'under construction'.

Trivia, Texts and Images

Trivia
Huygens's birthday calculatorHow many days are we separated from the birthdays of Christiaan Huygens, his siblings, his father and his paternal grandfather?

Texts
Over Reeckeningh in Spelen van Geluck / De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae: facts and figures Everything you might want to know about both texts, but were afraid to ask: about Van Schooten's book of which Huygens' tract formed a small part, about variations in the title, bibliographic information, various editions etc.
The origin of De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae 1654-1657 The correspondence of Christiaan Huygens with Van Schooten, Roberval, Mylon, Fermat and others about the De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae. NB this page is not complete.
De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae 1657, images The text on games of dice, written in Dutch by Christiaan Huygens and translated & published into Latin by Frans van Schooten.
Note: the images were scanned from a photocopy. The scans of some pages (518, 520,522,524, 526, 528) were partly unreadable and had te be digitally cleaned up. The pages 526 and 528 are not yet available. The remarks on page 525 (curly braces) and 527 (verbeterd to ae) were made by me.
De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae 1657, text The text on games of dice, written in Dutch by Christiaan Huygens and translated & published into Latin by Frans van Schooten. Note: this text is corrected but may still contain errors. Always check against the original printed text. An introductory text is underway.
Over Reeckeningh in Spelen van Geluck 1660, text The text on games of dice, written in Dutch by Christiaan Huygens and published by Frans van Schooten. Note: this text is corrected but may still contain errors. Always check against the original printed text. An introductory text is underway.
The Laws of Chance 1692 The translation of De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae by John Arbuthnot.
CHRISTIANI HUGENII LIBELLUS DE RATIOCINIIS IN LUDO ALEAE OR, The VALUE of all CHANCES... 1714 The translation of De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae by William Browne. the Browne translation was transcribed by Peter M. Lee. The Latex source was found at http://www1.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/huygens.htm. It was lightly edited 15 Jan 2003 by Peter G. Doyle. It was more severely edited/corrected and expanded with the the three prefaces by me.
Huygens' 14 propositions and 5 problems The texts of the propositions and problems from eight editions/translations in Latin (1657, 1713), Dutch (1660), English (1692, 1714, 1963, 1990) and French (1920) ordered by proposition/problem
1695 Library Auction catalogue:Mathematical Works Since april, 2004 I have spent time on converting the 1695 auction catalogue of Christiaan Huygens' Library into a database. November 2005 I noticed at Christiaan Huygens in het Nederlands that Ad Davidse had followed a slightly different approach. This has resulted in the full text of the 1695 auction catalogue (and more!). I will continue my database approach. The list of mathematical works is complete and should be free of typing errors.
Constanter: Books from the library of Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) A substantial part of the library of Constantijn Huygens was distributed among his heirs. It is therefore relevant to get some idea of what part and which books became Christiaan's.
Locating Huygens' copy of Molyneux' Dioptrica. After the discovery december 2007, of a dedication to Huygens in the Dioptrica copy in the EEBO collection, I was able to locate this Huygens' copy in the first half of 2008 with the generous support of several librarians. In the mean time the EEBO information is corrected and updated.

Paintings
Portraits of Chr. Huygens 1640-2006 Iconographie of Christiaan Huygens, with paintings and more.

An unknown portrait of Chr. Huygens?
This possible portrait of Christiaan Huygens together with Giovanni Domenico Cassini (front left), dating around 1673-1675, can be found in the Musée National du Château et des Trianons in Versailles.
NB this image is just a small part of the larger painting.

Enter for more information on the painting

These webpages serve as a companion web site to my article in the proceedings of the Huygens conference in Noordwijk, april 2004, that appeared in december 2004. As such it is an extension of the article and tries to adress questions I already formulated in the article. It also serves as a tool to organize my ideas on the various people and objects in the painting

Being a part of the Under Construction pages, this web site is also under construction and is somewhat rough around the navigational edges. Pressing BACK will suffice in most cases