Leiden, University of, at Leiden, the Netherlands; founded 1575 by William the Silent, Prince of Orange. It became a state institution in the 19th cent. It has faculties of theology, law, medi...

John of Leiden, c.1509–1536, Dutch Anabaptist leader. His original name was Beuckelszoon, Beuckelzoon, Bockelszoon, Bockelson, Beukels, or Buckholdt. John of Leiden was attracted to the extrem...

Snell or Snellius, Willebrord, 1591–1626, Dutch mathematician. He is generally credited with the discovery (1621) of the law of the refraction of light. In 1613 he became professor of mathemat...

Garth, Sir Samuel, 1661–1719, English poet and physician, b. Yorkshire. He studied medicine at Leiden and Cambridge. His chief work is the satirical poem The Dispensary (1699), in which he adv...

Bilderdijk, Willem, 1756–1831, Dutch poet. He tutored Louis Bonaparte in Dutch and later conducted a small private college at Leiden, where his pupils included Isaäc da Costa and Jacob van Len...

Einthoven, Willem, 1860–1927, Dutch physiologist, b. Java, M.D. Univ. of Utrecht, 1885. He was professor at the Univ. of Leiden from 1886. To measure the electric currents developed by the hea...

Kamerlingh Onnes, Heike, 1853–1926, Dutch physicist. He was, from 1882, professor of physics at the Univ. of Leiden. He made important studies of the properties of helium and, in attempting to...

Leyden jar, form of capacitor invented at the Univ. of Leiden in the 18th cent. It consists of a narrow-necked glass jar coated over part of its inner and outer surfaces with conductive metal ...

Waterhouse, Benjamin, 1754–1846, American physician, b. Newport, R.I. He studied at the universities of Edinburgh and Leiden. In 1783 he became professor on the first faculty of the Harvard me...

Arminius, Jacobus, 1560–1609, Dutch Reformed theologian, whose original name was Jacob Harmensen. He studied at Leiden, Marburg, Geneva, and Basel and in 1588 became a pastor at Amsterdam. He ...