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Willebrord Snell

Willebrord Snell

1580 CE–1626 CE · Leiden

Willebrord Snellius (born Willebrord Snel van Royen, also Willebrord van Roijen Snell (13 June 1580 – 30 October 1626), commonly known simply as Snellius and Snell, was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician. Snell is best known for discovering the law of refraction of light, now known as Snell's law, his pioneering work in survey known as Snellius's triangulation, and the Snellius–Pothenot problem, a means in planar trigonometry of finding an unknown point from known ones. Despite being commonly attributed to Snell, the law of refraction was first discovered by the Persian scientist Ibn Sahl around 984 AD.

Adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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LeidenNetherlands

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Leiden, a city in the western Netherlands, seat of the country's oldest university. Jacobus Arminius studied and later held a chair of theology at Leiden (1603-1609), where his disputes over predestination led to the Remonstrant controversy.

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