Dutch mathematician and physicist who lived from 1629 to 1695; son of
Constantijn Huygens. He improved telescopic lenses, was the first to interpret
correctly the ring structure surrounding Saturn, and discovered its satellite (see
also: Communications Satellite, Satellite - Artificial) Titan. He was the first to use a pendulum in clocks. Huygens developed a Wave theory of Light opposed to Newton, Sir Isaac's corpuscular theory and formulated Huygens's principle of light waves, which
holds that every point on a wave front is a source of new waves. He discovered
the polarization of light in calcite.