Willebrord van royen snell biography of rory allen

Quick Info Born 13 June Leiden, Netherlands Died 30 October Leiden, Netherlands Summary Willebrord Snell was a Dutch mathematician who is best known for the law of refraction, a basis of modern geometric optics; but this only become known after his death when Huygens published it. View four larger pictures. It is also commonly given as Willebrordus Snellius , the Latin version of Willebrord Snell, which he used for all his publications.

His father was Rudolph Snell - , the professor of mathematics at Leiden, and his mother was Machteld Cornelisdochter from an leading family from Oudewater. Willebrord, the eldest of his parents' three children, was named after his paternal grandfather. His two younger brothers were Jacob who died in aged 16 and Hendrik who died in childhood.

Let us make a comment on Willebrord's date of birth. Some biographies of Snell give as the year of his birth but this is simply an error copied from an old biography. Others give the year as or but claim that his date of birth is unknown. In fact no record of his birth exists but his date of birth can be deduced with a fair degree of certainty from a letter his father wrote on his son's birthday.

See [ 3 ] for further details. Rudolph Snell - , although appointed as an extraordinary professor of mathematics at the University of Leiden in , was a broad scholar who did not have a great deal of mathematical skill.

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His teaching was based mainly on the work of Peter Ramus although the university authorities tried to persuade him to teach more Euclid and less Ramus. He had taught Greek, Latin, Hebrew and the liberal arts in a high school earlier in his career and he had studied medicine and Aristotle 's works. In addition to his university work, Rudolphus ran his own private school and, in his house near the university, he boarded a large number of students.

It is in this house, filled with students, in which Willebrord grew up. His schooling was from his father who taught him Latin, Greek and philosophy.