7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7early age, Huygens showed a marked mechanical bent and
a talent for drawing and mathematics. Some of his early
efforts in geometry impressed Descartes, who was an
occasional visitor to the Huygens’ household. In 1645
Huygens entered the University of Leiden, where he
studied mathematics and law. Two years later he entered
the College of Breda, in the midst of a furious controversy
over the philosophy of Descartes. Although Huygens
later rejected certain of the Cartesian tenets including
the identification of extension and body, he always
affirmed that mechanical explanations were essential in
science, a fact that later was to have an important influ-
ence on his mathematical interpretation of both light and
gravitation.
In 1655 Huygens for the first time visited Paris, where
his distinguished parentage, wealth, and affable disposition
gave him entry to the highest intellectual and social circles.
During his next visit to Paris in 1660, he met Blaise Pascal,
with whom he had already been in correspondence on
mathematical problems. Huygens had already acquired a
European reputation by his publications in mathematics,
especially his De Circuli Magnitudine Inventa of 1654, and
by his discovery in 1659 of the true shape of the rings of
Saturn—made possible by the improvements he had intro-
duced in the construction of the telescope with his new
method of grinding and polishing lenses. Using his
improved telescope, he discovered a satellite of Saturn in
March 1655 and distinguished the stellar components of
the Orion nebula in 1656. His interest, as an astronomer,
in the accurate measurement of time then led him to his
discovery of the pendulum as a regulator of clocks, as
described in his Horologium (1658).
In 1666 Huygens became one of the founding members
of the French Academy of Sciences, which granted him a
pension larger than that of any other member and an