Snell, Willebrord

Willebrord Snell, Latin-Dutch Willebrordus Snellius, original name Willebrord Snel van Royen, (born June 13, 1580, Leiden, Netherlands—died October 30, 1626, Leiden), Dutch astronomer and mathematician who discovered the law of refraction (also known as Snell’s law), which relates the degree of the bending of light to the properties of the refractive material. This law is basic to modern geometrical optics.

In 1613 he succeeded his father, Rudolph Snell (1546–1613), as professor of mathematics in the University of Leiden. His Eratosthenes Batavus (1617; “Batavian Eratosthenes”) contains the account of his method of measuring Earth. The account of Snell’s law of refraction (1621) went unpublished, capturing attention only when the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens related Snell’s finding in Dioptrica (1703). (The law had been independently discovered about 600 years earlier by the mathematician Ibn Sahl.)