Pieter Nieuwland

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pieter Nieuwland

Pieter Nieuwland (born November 5, 1764 in Diemermeer near Amsterdam , † November 24, 1794 in Leiden ) was a Dutch poet, mathematician and naturalist.

Life

His father was a carpenter by trade, but was well-read and experienced in mathematics. He taught his only son until he was eleven. Nieuwland showed a great talent from an early age. When his mother showed him copperplate engravings by Jan Luiken at the age of three and read him the 50 six-footed verses, he was later able to repeat them by heart. When the arithmetic master Henricus Aeneae asked him at the age of eight whether he could determine the spatial content of a statue, he wanted to make a piece of wood from which this statue was made into a cube and compare the weights.

At the age of eleven he was accepted into the house of Messrs. Bernhardus and Jeronimo de Bosch in Amsterdam, where he received daily classes for four years and learned Latin and Greek . From 1777 he attended the Atheneum Illustre in Amsterdam , where he learned literature from Herman Tollius and philosophy and mathematics from Daniel Wyttenbach . From September 1784 to 1785 he studied natural science and mathematics at the University of Leiden and then with Jean Henri van Swinden at the University of Amsterdam .

Nieuwland's main areas of interest were mathematics, the science of nature (especially physics and chemistry) and later also astronomy . He was also very interested in poetry, wrote poems himself, including the Ode Orion (1788), which made him "immortal in Holland", and he was also considered the best contemporary translator from Greek.

In 1787 he was elected by the Utrecht estates to succeed Johann Friedrich Hennert as professor at the University of Utrecht . This reputation was reversed, however, and he was instead appointed by the Amsterdam magistrate as lecturer in mathematics, astronomy and navigation.

At the age of 22 he was accepted into a commission of the Amsterdam Admiralty, alongside Jean Henri van Swinden and van Keulen, which was supposed to improve the nautical charts and in which he worked for over eight years (until his death). In 1789 he became a member of the learned society Felix Meritis , where he could carry out chemical investigations and demonstrate. In July 1793 he was appointed to succeed Christiaan Hendrik Damen (1754–1793) as professor of natural science, astronomy and mathematics at the University of Leiden . In 1794 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

Nieuwland's scientific contributions are in the fields of nautical science and navigation, physics and astronomy.

He improved the method developed by Cornelis Douwes to determine the latitude from two measured sun heights, determined the most advantageous times for the measurement and the possible errors. In 1789 he reported to de la Lande in Paris. After the death of his wife in 1792 he spent two months in Gotha with Franz Xaver von Zach and discussed the measurement of latitude. The treatise on this topic appeared in 1793 in the " Astronomical Yearbooks " published by Johann Elert Bode .

On shipping, among other things, his work Zeevaardkunde (1793 by Georg Hülst van Keulen) and the treatise About the Sea Length and the Sea Almanac published by the Admiralty Commission , which are largely based on his work, were published.

In astronomy he examined the inclination of the rotation axis of the planets to the normal of their orbit (i.e., for example, the earth's axis against the ecliptic ) and gave an explanation within the framework of Newton's theory of gravity , which was published in 1793 in the supplement to the “Astronomical Yearbooks ”appeared.

Nieuwland died of a sore throat in 1794 at the age of 30. The Pieter-Nieuwlandstraat in Utrecht and Amsterdam and the Pieter Nieuwland College , a secondary school in Amsterdam, bear his name.

literature

  • Gerrit A. Steffens: Pieter Nieuwland en het evenwicht . T. Willink Publ., Zwolle 1964.
  • Jean H. van Swinden: Lijkrede op Pieter Nieuwland . Amsterdam 1795.
  • FKH Kossmann: NIEUWLAND (Pieter) . In: Petrus Johannes Blok , Philipp Christiaan Molhuysen (Ed.): Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek . Part 10. N. Israel, Amsterdam 1974, Sp. 671 (Dutch, knaw.nl / dbnl.org - first edition: AW Sijthoff, Leiden 1937, reprint unchanged).
  • Abraham Jacob van der Aa : Biographical Woordenboek der Nederlanden. Verlag JJ van Brederode, Haarlem 1868, vol. 13, p. 248, ( online , Dutch)
  • GCB Suringar: Het onderwijs in de Natuurkundige wetenschappen, to de Leidsche Hoogeschool, durende het dertigjarig tijdvak van 1785 - 1815. In: Nederlandsch tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde. A. Frijlink, Amsterdam, 1870, p. 20, ( online )
  • Pieter Nieuwland (obituary) . In: Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . tape 1 , no. 71 , March 3, 1798, p. 561–566 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - biography based on the obituary by Jean H. van Swinden).

Web link

swell

  1. ↑ a b c d Pieter Nieuwland (obituary) . In: Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung . tape 1 , no. 71 , March 3, 1798, p. 561–566 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ^ Orion, Ode by Pieter Nieuwland . Ten Drink et Vries, 1836 (Dutch, French, dbnl.org - translated by Auguste Clavareau).
  3. ↑ Today The Felix Meritis Foundation .
  4. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 179.
  5. ^ Pieter Nieuwland College. Retrieved November 4, 2018 (Dutch).
personal data
SURNAME Nieuwland, Pieter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nieuwland, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch poet, mathematician and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1764
PLACE OF BIRTH Diemermeer near Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1794
Place of death Suffer