Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor who is regarded as a key figure in the Scientific Revolution. In physics, Huygens made seminal contributions to optics and mechanics, while as an astronomer he studied the rings of Saturn and discovered its largest moon, Titan. As an engineer and inventor, he improved the design of telescopes and invented the pendulum clock, the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. A talented mathematician and physicist, his works contain the first idealization of a physical problem by a set of mathematical parameters, and the first mathematical and mechanistic explanation of an unobservable physical phenomenon.
Leiden University is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. It was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange as the first university in the Netherlands.
The Royal Netherlands Navy is the maritime service branch of the Netherlands Armed Forces. It was founded on 8 January 1488, making it the third-oldest naval force in the world.
The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The literal translation of the Dutch name Vrije Universiteit is "Free University". "Free" refers to independence of the university from both the State and the Dutch Reformed Church. Both within and outside the university, the institution is commonly referred to as "the VU". Although founded as a private institution, the VU has received government funding on a parity basis with public universities since 1970. The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern Buitenveldert neighbourhood of Amsterdam and adjacent to the modern Zuidas business district.
Leiden University Libraries is a library founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. It is regarded as a significant place in the development of European culture: it is a part of a small number of cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment. This was due particularly to the simultaneous presence of a unique collection of exceptional sources and scholars. Holdings include approximately 5,200,000 volumes, 1,000,000 e-books, 70,000 e-journals, 2,000 current paper journals, 60,000 Oriental and Western manuscripts, 500,000 letters, 100,000 maps, 100,000 prints, 12,000 drawings, 300,000 photographs and 3,000 cuneiform tablets. The library manages the largest collections worldwide on Indonesia and the Caribbean. Furthermore, Leiden University Libraries is the only heritage organization in The Netherlands with five registrations of documents in UNESCO's international Memory of the World Register.
Wouter Jacobus Hanegraaff is professor of the History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He served as the first president of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) from 2005 to 2013.
Sophie, Baroness De Schaepdrijver is a Belgian historian.
Pier Vellinga is an environmental scientist and one of the Netherlands' experts on the impacts of climate change.
The Canon of the Netherlands is a list of fifty topics that aims to provide a chronological summary of Dutch history to be taught in primary schools and the first two years of secondary school in the Netherlands. The fifty topics are divided into fourteen sections.
Johannes Bronkhorst is a Dutch Orientalist and Indologist, specializing in Buddhist studies and early Buddhism. He is emeritus professor at the University of Lausanne.
Catharina Geertruida Santing, commonly going by Catrien Santing is a Dutch medievalist. Her research focuses on cultural history and medical history in the late-medieval and early-modern Low Countries.
Ineke Sluiter is a Dutch classicist and professor of Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University since 1998. Her research focuses on language, literature, and public discourse in classical antiquity. She was a winner of the 2010 Spinoza Prize. Sluiter has been president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since June 2020, and previously served as vice president from 2018 to 2020.
Martine Theodora Bax is a Dutch-Canadian art historian and art critic in modern art. Her specializations are the work of Piet Mondrian and the relationship between art and Western Esotericism, especially Modern Theosophy and Anthroposophy.
Arthur der Weduwen is a Dutch historian and writer. His work primarily focuses on the Dutch Republic, the history of the book and the emergence of the newspaper.
Universiteiten van Nederland (UNL), previously Vereniging van Universiteiten until November 2021, is a trade group of government-funded research universities, including three special universities, and the Open University of the Netherlands. It formed as the Vereniging van Samenwerkende Nederlandse Universiteiten in 1985, as a successor to the Academische Raad.
Caroline Alexandra van Eck is a Dutch art historian and academic, specialising in the art and architecture of the early modern period. Since 2016, she has been Professor of Art History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. She was Professor of Art and Architecture before 1800 at Leiden University from 2006 to 2016, and previously taught at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Groningen. She was the 2017 Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford.
Dutch philosophy is a broad branch of philosophy that discusses the contributions of Dutch philosophers to the discourse of Western philosophy and Renaissance philosophy. The philosophy, as its own entity, arose in the 16th and 17th centuries through the philosophical studies of Desiderius Erasmus and Baruch Spinoza. The adoption of the humanistic perspective by Erasmus, despite his Christian background, and rational but theocentric perspective expounded by Spinoza, supported each of these philosopher's works. In general, the philosophy revolved around acknowledging the reality of human self-determination and rational thought rather than focusing on traditional ideals of fatalism and virtue raised in Christianity. The roots of philosophical frameworks like the mind-body dualism and monism debate can also be traced to Dutch philosophy, which is attributed to 17th century philosopher René Descartes. Descartes was both a mathematician and philosopher during the Dutch Golden Age, despite being from the Kingdom of France. Modern Dutch philosophers like D.H. Th. Vollenhoven provided critical analyses on the dichotomy between dualism and monism.
The Descartes-Huygens Prize is an yearly scientific prize created in 1995 by the French and the Dutch governments, and attributed to two scientists of international level, a French one chosen by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen and a Dutch one chosen by the Académie des sciences, to reward their work and their contributions to the French-Dutch cooperation.
Heather Amanda Sutherland is an Australian historian and former professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. She specialised in the history of Indonesia, and also researched that of other Southeast Asian countries. She is the long-term partner of British-Australian actress Miriam Margolyes.
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