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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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| Statue in Simon Stevinplein, Brugge |
 |
Announcement of the Inauguration of
Stevin's statue in July 1846 amid
a programme of celebratory events. |
