Related papers: Jan Veth's paintings of Jacobus Kapteyn
Honorary degrees and particularly doctorates are important instruments to enhance the standing of universities and professors, in addition to receiving these as a measure of a scientist's recognition. Jacobus C. Kapteyn from the University…
In this contribution I discuss the Kapteyn Astronomical Laboratory during the period of Pieter Johannes van Rhijn's directorate, which lasted from 1921 to 1957. It had developed under the founder Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn into one of the…
For several decades a portrait of Johannes Kepler has been widely circulating among professional astronomers, scientific and academic institutions, and the general public. Despite its provenance and identification having been questioned in…
This is the final and somewhat expanded version. The quality of the color photos of this version is poor as there is an upload limit on astro-ph. Much higher quality versions are available at http://space.mit.edu/~lewin/jvp.html . A bound…
We have investigated the nature and the origin of the telescopes depicted in three paintings of J. Bruegel the Elder completed between 1609 and 1618. The "tube" that appears in the painting dated 1608-1612 represents a very early dutch…
Several early spyglasses are depicted in five paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder completed between 1608 and 1625, as he was court painter of Archduke Albert VII of Habsburg. An optical tube that appears in the Extensive Landscape with View…
Ancient instruments of high interest for research on the origin and diffusion of early scientific devices in the late XVI - early XVII centuries are reproduced in three paintings by Jan Brueghel the Elder. We investigated the nature and the…
Albert Einstein accepted a 'special' visiting professorship at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in February 1920. Although his appointment should have been a mere formality, it took until October of that year before Einstein…
Einstein's sink is a well-known object among physics and astronomy students at Leiden University. Stories about its origin have been passed down since it was moved to the large lecture room of the then newly built Oort Building in 1998.…
These are notes (in Dutch) of lectures on multiple scattering of waves, given at the University of Amsterdam in 1993. At request of some of the students, now professors, they are made publicly available. The main part of the material is…
On 13-01-2024 the annual wintersymposium of the Koninlijk Wiskundig Genootschap (KWG) was held in the academiegebouw in Utrecht. The symposium had the theme ``inzichtelijk abstract''. Thomas Rot gave a lecture on his favourite theorem from…
On folio 855 recto of the Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo da Vinci drew three 'easily movable' bridges, but one of them is enigmatic: all 'replicas' in Leonardo museums and exhibitions come as a surprise, to say the least, to any engineer or…
This article reviews the early academic and public reception of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in the Netherlands, particularly after Arthur Eddington's eclipse experiments of 1919. Initially, not much attention was given to…
At the end of the 17th century, the collection was established through the acquisition of Leiden instrumentmaker Musschenbroek's collection. Its aim was to demonstrate physical phenomena. Until the end of the 18th century, the collection…
In September 2006, Piet Groeneboom officially retired as professor of statistics at Delft University of Technology and the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He did so by delivering his farewell lecture `Summa Cogitatio' ([42] in Piet's…
This article considers the Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria, published in 1666 and relatively neglected by Leibniz s scholars. However in recent times the tide seems to be changing. Our work presents three main parts (sections II, III and…
(in english): Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier was born in Saint-L\^o on March 11, 1811. He entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 1831, from which he was to emerge 8th two years later. After first devoting himself to chemistry, in 1836 he…
An interesting result of Veech more than 50 years ago is a parity, or mod $2$, version of the Kronecker--Weyl equidistribution theorem concerning the irrational rotation sequence $\{q\alpha\}$, $q=0,1,2,3,\ldots.$ If $\alpha$ is badly…
We follow the trajectory of John H. Van Vleck from his 1926 Bulletin for the National Research Council (NRC) on the old quantum theory to his 1932 book, The Theory of Electric and Magnetic Susceptibilities. We highlight the continuity of…
The purpose of this note is to exhibit clearly how the "graphical condensation" identities of Kuo, Yan, Yeh and Zhang follow from classical Pfaffian identities by the Kasteleyn-Percus method for the enumeration of matchings. Knuth termed…