![]() Bruges was the scene of intense religious conflict. It may have been related to the political events of that period. Why he had returned to Bruges in 1577 is not clear. He worked in the office of Jan de Brune of the Brugse Vrije, the castellany of Bruges. In 1577 Simon Stevin returned to Bruges and was appointed city clerk by the aldermen of Bruges, a function he occupied from 1577–1581. It is possible that he completed these travels over a longer period of time. Some biographers mention that he travelled to Prussia, Poland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden and other parts of Northern Europe, between 15. Based on references in his work "Wisconstighe Ghedaechtenissen" (Mathematical Memoirs), it has been inferred that he must have moved first to Antwerp where he began his career as a merchant's clerk. It is assumed that he left Bruges to escape the religious persecution of Protestants by the Spanish rulers. ![]() Stevin was most likely a Calvinist since a Catholic would likely not have risen to the position of trust he later occupied with Maurice, Prince of Orange. Stevin left Bruges in 1571 apparently without a particular destination. He was likely educated at a Latin school in his hometown. ![]() It is believed that Stevin grew up in a relatively affluent environment and enjoyed a good education. Through her marriage, Cathelijne became a member of a family of Calvinists it is thought that Simon Stevin was likely brought up in the Calvinist faith. Cathelijne would later marry Joost Sayon, who was involved in the carpet and silk trade and was a member of the schuttersgilde Sint-Sebastiaan. ![]() Simon Stevin's mother, Cathelijne (or Catelyne), was the daughter of a wealthy family from Ypres her father Hubert was a poorter of Bruges. His name is usually written as Stevin, but some documents regarding his father use the spelling Stevijn (pronunciation ) this was a common spelling shift in 16th-century Dutch. It is assumed he was born in Bruges, since he enrolled at Leiden University under the name Simon Stevinus Brugensis (meaning "Simon Stevin from Bruges"). The exact birth date and the date and place of his death are uncertain. Very little is known with certainty about Simon Stevin's life, and what we know is mostly inferred from other recorded facts. He also replaced the word chemie, the Dutch for chemistry, by scheikunde ("the art of separating"), made in analogy with wiskunde. He also translated various mathematical terms into Dutch, making it one of the few European languages in which the word for mathematics, wiskunde ( wis and kunde, i.e., "the knowledge of what is certain"), was not a loanword from Greek but a calque via Latin. He made various contributions in many areas of science and engineering, both theoretical and practical. Effective weight goes up in proportion to the angle of inclination.Simon Stevin ( Dutch: 1548–1620), sometimes called Stevinus, was a Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. If it is in balance, then we can remove the bottom 8 spheres, since they cancel each other out, and we are left with 4 spheres balancing 2 spheres, which means the two spheres on the steep plane each have an effective weight twice as great as each of the four spheres on the shallow plane. Now clearly the wreath is in balance – if it were moving, it would be an example of perpetual motion, which Stevin thought absurd. The plane at the shallow angle will be twice as long as the steeper plane, since they form two of the sides of a right triangle, so there will be four spheres on the long side and two on the short side. Imagine a wreath of spheres (14 in this case, see first image) straddling two inclined planes, one at an angle of 30°, the other 60°. In his book on the art of weighing, Stevin considered the problem of determining the effective weight of a body on an inclined plane, and he solved it with one of the most ingenious thought experiments in the entire history of mechanics. Stevin was one of the many revivers of Archimedes in the late Renaissance who set the stage for Galileo's work in mechanics and hydrostatics. Portrait of Simon Stevin, engraving, unknown artist and date, in the collection of Leiden University (Wikimedia commons)
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