MUSSCHENBROEK, PIETER VAN (16921761)

This article appears in Volume V19, Page 94 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MOS-NAN

MUSSCHENBROEK, PIETER VAN (16921761) , Dutch natural philosopher, was born on the 14th of

March

1692 at Leiden, where his father Johann Joosten van Musschenbroek (166o17o7) was a maker of

physical

PHYSICAL

apparatus. He studied at the university of his native city, where he was a

pupil

PUPIL (Lat. pupillus, orphan, minor, dim. of pupus, boy, allied to puer, from root pm- or peu-, to beget, cf. "pupa," Lat. for " doll," the name given to the stage intervening between the larval and imaginal stages in certain insects)

and friend of W. J. s'G. Gravesande. Graduating in 1715 with a dissertation, De aeris praesentia in humoribus animalium, Musschenbroek was appointed professor at

Duisburg

DUISBURG

in 1719. In 1723 he was promoted to the chair of natural philosophy and

mathematics

MATHEMATICS (Gr. /saBnµar1Kil, Sc. vOcvn or E7rlQTt'µn; from p iN.La, "learning" or "science ")

Utrecht

UTRECHT
UTRECHT, TREATY OF

. In 1731 he declined an invitation to

Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN (Danish Kjobenhavn)

, and was promoted in consequence to the chair of astronomy at

Utrecht

UTRECHT
UTRECHT, TREATY OF

in 1732. The attempt of George II. of England in 1737 to attract him to the newly-established university of Gottingen was also unsuccessful. At length, however, the claims of his native city overcame his resolution to remain at Utrecht, and he accepted the mathematical chair at Leiden in 1739, where, declining all offers from abroad, he remained till his death on the 9th of September 1761.
His first important production was Epitome elementorum physicomathematicorum (12mo, Leiden, 1726)a

work

WORK

which was after-wards gradually altered as it passed through several editions, and which appeared at length (posthumously, ed. by Johann Lulofs, one of his colleagues as Leiden) in 1762, under the title of Introductio ad philosophiam naturalem. The Physicae experimentales et geometricae dissertations (1729) threw new light on magnetism, capillary attraction, and the cohesion of bodies. A Latin edition with notes (1731) of the Italian

work

WORK

Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nelll'Accademia del Cimento contained among many other investigations a description of a new

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

, the pyrometer, which Musschenbroek had invented, and of several experiments which he had made on the expansion of bodies by heat. Musschenbroek was also the author of Elementa physics (8vo, 1729), and his name is associated with the invention of the Leyden jar (q.v.).

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