Christiaan Huygens
In 1690, Christiaan Huygens published his most influential work, Traité de la Lumière. In which he introduced the idea of light as a wave that travels through space. Christiaan also made significant discoveries in Astronomy, Biology and Probability. He was admired by Isaac Newton as “the most elegant mathematician”. A true visionary, he proposed the concept of germs as microscopic organisms that cause disease. He was the first to measure the size of Venus. The first to determine that the Martian day was roughly as long as ours, and he discovered Titan (one of Saturn's moons)—all of this in his twenties!
Source: Sagan, Carl. 1980. Cosmos. New York: Random House
Public Domain
Back to archive
Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!