Simon Stevin: A Life.

 I had lived in Brugge for some time before I learned that the statue in Simon Stevinplein commemorated a person of great distinction. I discovered more today when I visited a small exhibition in the Stadsarchief in the Burg which includes a detailed and excellent introductory video giving lots of information on Simon Stevin.

Simon Stevin
1567 Brugge-
1620 The Hague.

Prins Maurits van Nassau
1567-1625.

Simon’s father, Anthusensis Stevin, estranged from his family and described as the cadet son of the mayor of Veurne, moved to Brugge where he met Cathelijne van der Poort, daughter of a burgher family from Ypres. The couple did not marry despite her pregnancy but she eventually did marry a merchant in the silk and carpet trade who happened to be a Calvinist. Thus it is likely that Simon was brought up in the Calvinist tradition. When an adult, Simon was an avid student but his early jobs seem superficially, ordinary, given his talents and history: a book-keeper and cashier in Antwerp though he travelled in Poland, Prussia and Norway between 1571 and 1577 when he took a job in the tax office in Brugge eventually moving to Leiden in 1581 to attend the Latin school after which, at the mature age of 35, he entered the University of Leiden in 1583. While a student there, he met Maurits, Count of Nassau, the second son of William of Orange and the two became close friends. Simon became both mathematics tutor to the young Prince as well as close advisor. William of Orange effectively ruled the North Netherlands, [newly independent from Spain in 1581] which was predominantly Calvinist but he was assassinated in Delft on 10 July 1584 by a religious fanatic, and his younger son was appointed Stadhouder of Holland and Zeeland, the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1584.

Crane at work in wine market
in Brugge, 200 years before
Stevin's work.

 A series of military triumphs over Spain followed the elevation of Maurits who understood the importance of military strategy, tactics and engineering. In 1600 he asked Simon to set up an engineering school in the University of Leiden, with courses conducted in Dutch, a progressive and popular move. Recent discovery in the Public Record Office in The Hague recording Simon’s salary at 600 Dutch guilders in 1604 confirms his high position then. Simon was Quartermaster-General of the army from 1604 and during this period he suggested the idea of flooding the lowlands in the path of an invading army by opening selected sluices in dykes. He had become an outstanding engineer who advised, and wrote extensively, on designing cranes, windmills, locks and ports. He advised Prince Maurits on building fortifications for the ongoing war with Spain and wrote detailed descriptions of the military innovations adopted by the army. The seemingly perpetual war with Spain was halted by the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1609 and soon after this, in 1612 Simon bought a house in Raamstraat in The Hague [again showing high social status] and married Catherine Krai. The couple had four children one of whom, Hendrik, also went on to attend the University of Leiden, becoming a famous scientist in his own right and eventually editing his father’s collected works.

T

The author of 11 books, Simon Stevin made significant contributions to trigonometry, geometry,  decimal fractions, mechanics, architecture, musical theory, geography, fortifications, and navigation. His first book, Tafelen Van Interest, was published in 1582. Before presenting the numerical tables, Stevin gave rules for simple and compound interest with many examples of their use, thus making them accessible to many. Before this publication, unpublished manuscript interest tables were commonly used by bankers but treated as special and secret, unavailable to others outside the charmed banking circles.

The following year, 1583, in Problemata Geometrica, Stevin presented geometry based on the

Sterctenbouwing 1594
endearingly labelled as by
Simon Stevin van Brugghe.

teachings of Euclid and Archimedes with problem-solving heavily influenced by Durer. The book was in Latin, the only one of his books to be so, for he became a strong advocate of publishing scientific works in Dutch. In 1585, he published La Thiende, a twenty nine page booklet in which he presented an elementary and thorough account of decimal fractions. He said that he wrote this small book for the benefit of “stargazers, surveyors, carpet-makers, wine-gangers, mint-masters and all kinds of merchants.”

And almost two centuries later, in 1782, in America, Thomas Jefferson argued for a decimal currency system, based on America’s First Silver Dollar, to be adopted as standard for the U.S.A. He had studied, and was inspired by, “Disme: The Art of Tenths or Decimal Arithmetike” [1608] the English version by Robert Norton, of La Thiende by Simon Stevin where the use of decimals for all activities was actively promoted. It is accepted by many that the term, ‘dime’ for a tenth of a dollar could well be an echo of the title of Stevin’s book!

Although Simon Stevin did not invent decimals [they had been in use by the Arabs and the Chinese long before Simon’s time]j he did introduce their use in Mathematics in Europe and influenced important currency decisions for the fledgling U.S.A. He stated definitively that the universal introduction of decimal coinage, measures and weights would only be a matter of time although he was not universally correct in this! However, his important vision for, and writings on, decimals probably rate as his most momentous achievements in a field crowded with notable accomplishments.

Statue in Simon Stevinplein, Brugge

Announcement of the Inauguration of 
Stevin's statue in July 1846 amid 
a programme of celebratory events.