A Brill Calendar: September 26

Few distinguished surveyors of the Kingdom of Knowledge throughout the ages have devoted much attention to conventional academic education.

The frontiers of an expanding realm generate a traffic often alien to exchanges in its heartland. When Willem Jacob s’Gravesande (s’ Hertogenbosch, 26 September 1668 – Leyden, 28 February 1742) had been installed as a Leyden Professor in Physics in 1717, scientific inquiry in the nature of the universe had completed an unsurpassed ‘tour d’ horizon’.

Now the time had come to consolidate the revolutionary findings of the era of Newton and Huygens in academic curricula, worthy of one of the most prestigious universities anywhere. Soon after his investiture, s’Gravesande published the first text-book on experimental physics in 1719. Since the early days of Leyden and the great Simon Stevin (1543-1620), the university had enjoyed good relations with practitioners. It is seldom that a sense for practicability stood a national community in such good stead.

With his family ties in the Leyden world of craftsmanship, s’Gravesandecould readily draw on the resources of wealthy patrons and supporters meeting one another collectively and regularly in learned societies. It typifies the man, his environment and the ambiance of the early Enlightenment around the North Sea that scholars like s’Gravesande were also respectfully consulted and occasionally followed in their suffestions to regents and politicians, including schemes to improve dealing with the countries’ first exigiency: its water management.