Jean Henri van Swinden

Jan Hendrik van Swinden or Jean Henri ( born June 8, 1746 The Hague, † March 9, 1823 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch mathematician and scientist.

Life

His parents, the lawyer Phillipe van Swinden and Marie Anne Tolosan, were descendants of French refugees. He studied 1763-1766 at the University of Leiden philosophy, physics, anatomy, physiology, botany and chemistry, inter alia, in John Lulofs and was named after his dissertation on the attraction of Master of Liberal Arts and in the following year professor at the University of Franeker. 1788 at the Athenaeum Illustre Amsterdam ( forerunner of the University of Amsterdam ), he was appointed professor of mathematics, physics and astronomy.

For his work on the magnetic needle, he received in 1770 a prize from the Academy of Sciences in Paris and from work via the similarity between magnetism and electricity another award 1780 in Munich.

He and Henricus Aeneae (1743-1810) were from November 1798 to July 1799 in Paris, members of the Commission to determine the basis on which the new measure and should be based weight system. The system was introduced in its home country until 1812 under the French government.

He lectured to the Society Felix Meritis. With his pupil Pieter Nieuwland (1764-1794), he wrote a treatise on the Seefahtskunst.

After the French invasion in January 1795 he was in 1798 a member of the executive power of the Batavian Republic, but later returned to Amsterdam back to his studies.

Several of his students at the Athenaeum Illustre played a major role in the reconstruction of the study of mathematics, physics and astronomy at the Dutch universities after the Napoleonic wars, in particular Pieter Johannes Uylenbroek (1797-1844) in Leiden and Gerard Moll (1785-1838) in Utrecht.

He wrote a textbook on geometry, in German translation revised by Karl Friedrich Andreas Jacobi appeared.

Publications

• Treatises on perfect Maasse and weights; 1802
• Grondbeginsels meet the customer, Amsterdam 1816