Hugh Aldersey-Williams studied natural sciences at Cambridge. He is the author of Periodic Tales, Anatomies, Tide: The Science and Lore of the Greatest Force on Earth and Dutch Light.
At last - a scintillating biography of Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch mathematician, astronomer and inventor whose splendour has been unjustly eclipsed by the aura of Isaac Newton. After scouring archives, art galleries and museums in both the Netherlands and the UK, Hugh Aldersley-Williams has evocatively illuminated this brilliant polymath who laid the foundations of modern European science. -- Dr Patricia Fara, Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. Fascinating . . . an impressive piece of scholarship. I learned a lot -- John Gribbin, author of <i>Six Impossible Things </i>and <i>In Search of Schroedinger's Cat</i> Hugh Aldersey-Williams rescues his subject from Newton's shadow, where he was been unjustly confined for other three hundred years . . . a fresh and absorbing vision of 17th-century experimentation that sheds welcome light on wider European culture. * Literary Review *