Simon Stevin

Timeline

1. 1581–1584Leiden · LeidenMoved from the south to Leiden in 1581, first attending the Latin school and entering Leiden University at age thirty-five in 1583. He had already published an interest table in 1582, breaking the banking world's secrecy on compound-interest calculation. In Leiden he met Maurice of Nassau and became his mathematics teacher, laying the groundwork for a long engineering-adviser relationship.
2. 1585–1586Leiden · LeidenIn 1585 he published the twenty-nine-page The Disme (De Thiende / La Thiende), systematically teaching decimal arithmetic to surveyors, merchants and mint officials, and arguing that weights, measures and coinage would eventually be decimalized. He published an arithmetic treatise the same year; in 1586 The Principles of the Art of Weighing gave the parallelogram (triangle) law of forces and The Principles of Water-Weight advanced hydrostatics. In Delft he also performed falling-body experiments with lead balls of different weights, challenging Aristotle's theory of falling bodies.
3. 1590–1604The Hague · The HagueIn 1590 he published Civil Life, discussing obedience and order in times of turmoil. His 1594 Fortification rewrote the Italian bastion system for the Dutch lowlands. He planned windmills, sluices, harbours and the flooding of lowlands by opening sluices to block the enemy for Maurice; in 1600 he was commissioned to establish an engineering school teaching in Dutch at Leiden University. Around 1604 he took a post at the level of quartermaster-general, putting mathematics, statics and hydraulic engineering directly in the service of the Eighty Years' War.