The handbook A History of Science in The Netherlands aims to correct this situation by providing a chronological and thematic survey of the field from the 16th century to the present, essays on selected aspects of science in the Netherlands, and reference biographies of about 65 important Dutch scientists.

In the 400 years of its modern history the Netherlands has produced a distinguished array of eminent mathematicians, scientists and medical researchers including many Nobel-prize winners and other internationally recognised figures, from Stevin, Snel, and Huygens in the 17th century to Lorentz, Kammerlingh Onnes, Buys Ballot, De Vries, de Sitter, and Oort in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet it has often been noted that the history of science in the Netherlands is underepresented in the international literature. The handbook A History of Science in The Netherlands aims to correct this situation by providing a chronological and thematic survey of the field from the 16th century to the present, essays on selected aspects of science in the Netherlands, and reference biographies of about 65 important Dutch scientists. Written by more than 10 experts from Europe and North America, the handbook is the standard English-language reference work for the field.

This website provides access to a digital library of texts by Dutch scholars and scientists from a variety of academic disciplines, dating from the earliest times till about 1920. The texts have been selected for their relevance for the study of the history of science and scholarship in the Netherlands by an editorial committee. The Academy has made this field the focus of its publishing programme and aims to bring together a large corpus of texts in digital format for the research community.

'Enchanting to the point of escapism.' – Simon Ings, Spectator 'Hugh Aldersey-Williams rescues his subject from Newton's shadow, where he was been unjustly confined for over three hundred years.' – Literary Review Filled with incident, discovery, and revelation, Dutch Light is a vivid account of Christiaan Huygens’s remarkable life and career, but it is also nothing less than the story of the birth of modern science as we know it. Europe’s greatest scientist during the latter half of the seventeenth century, Christiaan Huygens was a true polymath. A towering figure in the fields of astronomy, optics, mechanics, and mathematics, many of his innovations in methodology, optics and timekeeping remain in use to this day. Among his many achievements, he developed the theory of light travelling as a wave, invented the mechanism for the pendulum clock, and discovered the rings of Saturn – via a telescope that he had also invented. A man of fashion and culture, Christiaan came from a family of multi-talented individuals whose circle included not only leading figures of Dutch society, but also artists and philosophers such as Rembrandt, Locke and Descartes. The Huygens family and their contemporaries would become key actors in the Dutch Golden Age, a time of unprecedented intellectual expansion within the Netherlands. Set against a backdrop of worldwide religious and political turmoil, this febrile period was defined by danger, luxury and leisure, but also curiosity, purpose, and tremendous possibility. Following in Huygens’s footsteps as he navigates this era while shuttling opportunistically between countries and scientific disciplines, Hugh Aldersey-Williams builds a compelling case to reclaim Huygens from the margins of history and acknowledge him as one of our most important and influential scientific figures.

The works of Simon Stevin are most interesting for the history of science, because they have such a wide scope and reflect so clearly the development of scientific knowledge around 1600 in central Europe. The recent publi cation of his Principal Works, with an English translation, has again attracted attention to his fascinating personality. The book on Stevin by Professor E. J. Dijksterhuis, originally published in the Dutch language, is an excellent introduction to the life and works of this remarkable Netherlander. Dijksterhuis prepared a somewhat condensed English edition, adapted to the foreign reader. Because of his untimely death, publication had to be deferred until the undersigned were able to undertake the editorial work. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, Amsterdam, allowed a grant, through which a linguistic revision of the text was made possible. We are very grateful to Miss C. Dikshoorn for the care with which she carried out this task and prepared the text for the press. A few supplementary notes have been added, for which we are personally responsible and which have been marked with our initials (R.H. or M.M.). Messrs Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, who published the original Dutch edition, have kindly agreed to bring out also the English version and have given all their attention to this publication. R. HOOYKAAS M. G. J. MINNAERT INTRODUCTION Modern science was born in the period beginning with Copernicus's work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (l543) and ending with Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687).

Presents evidence that Dutch commerce, not religion, inspired the rise of science in the 16th and 17th centuries. Scrutinises many historical documents relating to the study of medicine and natural history during this era, showing direct links between commerce and trade, and the flourishing of scientific investigation.

Innocence Abroad explores the encounter between the Netherlands and the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The origins of the telescope have been discussed and debated since shortly after the instrument's appearance in The Hague in 1608. Civic and national pride have led local dignitaries, popular writers, and numerous scholars to search the archives and to construct sharply divergent histories. Did the honor of the invention belong to the Dutch, to the Italians, to the English, or to the Spanish? And if the city of Middelburg in the Netherlands was, in fact, the cradle of the instrument, was the "true inventor" Hans Lipperhey or his rival Zacharias Jansen? Or was the instrument there before anyone knew it? Over the past several decades, a group of historians and scientists have sought out new documents, re-examined familiar ones, and tested early lenses and telescopes. This volume contains the proceedings of a symposium held in Middelburg in September 2008 to mark 400 years of the telescope. The essays in it, taken as a whole, present a new and convincing account of the origins of the instrument that changed mankind's vision of the universe.