"Those foreigners and their bloody pride"

HAVE YOU BEEN TALKING DUTCH?

The Netherlands once was a Calvinist country, that meant
people were humbled by damnation, and vanity is the devil's
work. Still the most common imperative among the Dutch is
"act normal."  However, I would like to give you a little
tour of Dutch Science, to show you that the role this
little country has played in past and present.

It really started with ERASMUS of Rotterdam. He was a
witty humanist, making fun of the clerical.  His books
sold by the ten thousands, and some Paris publishers even
made money from unauthorised printing of Erasmus' notes
from his wastebasket.  He gave the final push to the wave
of reformation that engulfed Europe for the first half of
the 16th century.

It was all an effort to get out of the heavy-handed
Spanish Rule, and once independence was gained in 1579
SIMON STEVIN was setting up the engineers school in
Delft.  He was the first to formulate and experiment
with action-reaction principles, detailed balance,
mass-independent gravitation acceleration, and the linear
conservation of momenta. (Galileo who?) The Dutch he gave
de-latinized names for mathematics (wiskunde) and physics
(natuurkunde).

Another name you might recognize is WILLIBRORD SNELLIUS,
who discovered the refraction law for light. He was the
first to apply triangulation in land measurements. He died
in 1626.

The telescope was invented by the Dutch too, around 1600,
and an improved construction was by HANS LIPPERSHEY in
1608, who later went on to construct microscopes with
multiple lenses.  In the 1629 the mathematician ALBERT
GERARD was the first to use brackets and abbreviations in
mathematics.  The first observation of bacteria: ANTONIE
VAN LEEUWENHOEK (1632-1723), and the first observation of
red blood cells was made by JAN SWAMMERDAM in 1658.

But truly the greatest Dutch scientist of all time was
CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS (1629-1695), son of the diplomat-poet
Constantijn Huygens. He discovered polarization of
light, the rings of Saturn, and he invented the pendulum
clock. Most stunnily, the HUYGENS Principle for the
propagation of light waves is as modern as ever, after we
recovered from the particle ideas of Newton and Goethe.

The eighteenth century were troubled times for the Dutch:
English Wars, German War (bad bishops), Spanish Wars,
French Wars, and French Occupation, the end of the Dutch
parliamentary power to be regained in 1848. From the French
Occupation we have a lasting memory in our names. It
was the first time that an official state register was
kept. Since it was kept by an occupation force, people
entered names like: "born-naked," "never-thought-of," and
"human," names that are still around today.

At the end of the nineteenth century there was a
surge in scientific activities: 'T HOFF introduced the
geometrical valence-electron bonds picture to describe
organic molecules that is still used today. VAN DER WAALS
modelled molecule-molecule interaction and explained the
water-gas phase transition. KAMERLINGH ONNES (1853-1926)
liquified helium and discovered superconductivity.

HENRIK ANTOON LORENTZ made a systematic study of
Maxwell equations and the electron, and put the finger
on the inconsistencies between Newtonian mechanics and
electromagnetism, some of which Einstein finally resolved
by the relativity theory. LORENTZ can be seen as the
grand master, with the obligatory white beard, of the
turn of the century physics, with many contributions and
a long career. He, however, did not survive the quantum
revolution. Occasionally LORENTZ get mixed up with
the Danish physicist Ludwig Valentin Lorenz. They both
discovered in 1880 the relation between polarizability and
refraction that bears both their names: LORENTZ-Lorenz. But
LORENTZ tranformations, LORENTZ gauge, and LORENTZ force
are definitely from good ol' Henrik.

LORENTZ received the Nobel prize in 1903 together with
PIETER ZEEMAN, who studied atomic spectra in magnetic
fields and elaborated upon the Faraday effect. PETER DEBYE
who developed specific heat laws for low temperatures,
was originally Dutch but worked mainly in Germany and
the United States, and so was NICHOLAAS BLOEMBERGEN,
who received the Nobel prize for developments in laser
spectroscopy, work he did in in America.

In 1925 two students of Ehrenfest in Leiden, UHLENBECK
and GOUDSMIT, came up with the idea of spin-half for the
electron. Similar ideas were going around that year but,
the great masters at the time Pauli and LORENTZ stopped
any progress. However, Ehrenfest sent off his students'
work for publication before they themselves were good
and ready. They received the recognition for it, and
counted themselves lucky with such a teacher. After
Ehrenfest HENDRIK KRAMERS took over the chair in Leiden.

In the 1930's ZERNIKE in Groningen invented the
phase-contrast microscope, for which he received the Nobel
prize. In 1948 H.G.B. CASIMIR suggested the possibility
of vacuum energy density by analyzing its force on two
conducting plates standing parallel, which now bears the
name CASIMIR EFFECT.  He also gave the name to invariants
for Lie Groups. HENDRIK CASIMIR has been head of the
research laboratory of Philips electronics company.

The arrival of the Belgian Leon van Hove in Utrecht in 1955
gave an impulse to theoretical physics in Utrecht. A bunch
of physicists were raised in his tradition: Van Kampen,
Hilgevoord, Ruijgrok, and VELTMAN. VELTMAN
was interested in spin 1 in Feynman perturbation theory,
and developed the first algebraic computer code to do
the trace algebra. It was called "Schoonschip," literally
"clean ship," a phrase that means cleaning up the mess and
starting afresh. Later with his student GERARD 'T HOOFT he
tackled the renormalizability of Yang-Mills theories. For
which they received the Nobel Prize. There could not be
a greater contrast between the two. VELTMAN jovial and
loud, always in for a joke and controversies, while 'T
HOOFT was a quiet puzzler, who worked best alone. They
fell out, which is rather typical of the atmosphere at
the theoretical physics institute in Utrecht nowadays.

The last person I will mention is SIMON VAN DER MEER, who
shared the Nobel prize with Carlo Rubbia for the discovery
of the W and Z bosons. VAN DER MEER was the engineer who,
in 1970, came up with the idea of steering anti-protons
one-by-one in the storage ring, such that enough survided
for the collision experiment. When he was asked why he
was not working in industry, inventing something useful,
he countered: "like what?" The reporter said: "uhuh,
I don't know; a three-dimensional television?" VAN DER
MEER final words on the subject were: "I don't think that
is very useful."

                --Norbert Ligterink--