Christiaan Huygens was a Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer with a major scientific influence in the era before Isaac Newton. His contributions to modern science include the Huygens-Fresnel principle, the explanation of the aspects of Saturn in terms of a ring system and a vision of extra-terrestrial life.

Hello there, thanks for visiting my page. I am a physicist/astronomer/applied mathematician/archivist/teacher living in Utrecht, The Netherlands. My interests include science, history, anthropology, art and languages. I am also a Wikipedian in Residence at the African Studies Centre Leiden, Leiden University, the Netherlands. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

• Your remarks, including suggestions and criticisms are welcome on the Talk page (please click the Talk button on high).

Some activities on Wikipedia

• Wikipedian in special residence with eleven Dutch academic libraries, November 2013 - March 2015, 5000+ files, 748 articles edited and 79 new articles contributed by participants, (in Dutch, all institutes). A project of Jos Damen, librarian at the Afrika-Studiecentrum, Leiden (African Studies Centre, Leiden, now Leiden University).
• Wikipedian in residence at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, May - November 2015 (uploads to Wikimedia Commons continuing into January 2016, 276,000+ files, in Dutch)
• Guinea-Bissau and Senegal 1973-1974 (Coutinho Collection), a project to upload 700+ images for the Afrika-Studiecentrum, Leiden, January - May 2016
• University Library Leiden / KITLV project to upload 3000+ Dutch colonial photographs and artworks, February - May 2016
• Werkgroep Natuur, Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland (Dutch Wikimedia chapter) project to upload 47 files to Sounds of grasshoppers and crickets of Northwestern Europe (Odé Collection). With User:K.vliet, October 2016
• Wikimedia Nederland project to upload 1100+ military aerial photographs donated by Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie (Dutch Institute for military history), July - August 2017
• Wikipedian in Residence at the African Studies Centre (Afrika-Studiecentrum), Leiden University to upload collections of some 6000 photographs of Africa made by Africanists to Wikimedia Commons, for instance Dogon (W.E.A. van Beek Collection), Robben Island 2015 (Rietveld Collection), Nigeria 1970-1973 (Rietveld Collection), A. A. van Achterberg Collection, F. van der Kraaij Collection, NSAG Collection and more, September - December 2017, then mostly unpaid August 2019 - August 2020, continued up to 2024 now as a volunteer.
  • Recently, the focus is on writing new Wikipedia articles on neglected Africanist subjects (72 done by August 2023).
• Statistics of the usage (including bounce) of "my" new pages with Pageviews at wmcloud.org (here counted only since 2015-07-01, I started in 2006): 111 English + 1 English, 352 Dutch, 8 French, 4 Italian, 1 German, 1 Afrikaans and 1 Portuguese articles. And 43 pages at nl.wikibooks.org.

Older work

On the English-language Wikipedia I started years ago to work on, for instance:

Science

• Christiaan Huygens, Dutch physicist
• Hugo Tetrode, Dutch physicist
• Weight

History

• busted the $24 - myth for buying Manhattan in 1626
  • Manhattan
  • History of New York etc.

Art

• Anna Alma-Tadema, new article

Hansmuller = JMMuller

Reader,
I User:JMMuller wrote this and I confess: I am also on the Dutch Wikipedia as Gebruiker:Hansmuller.
However in auld lang syne, when the world and w'pedia were still young and green, the corresponding English language username was occupied and I had to register here as JMMuller. When I work on more w'pedia's sometimes confusion arises: I humbly beg your kind forgiveness.
So Reader, now you KNOW.

(Is this a fair imitation of Charlotte Brontë/J. R. R. Tolkien :-) ?)

"The sum of all knowledge"

Non-native English speakers, at least in the Netherlands, take this erroneously to mean a summation ! of all knowledge, contrary to the intention of Jimmy Wales. Please refer to

• The sum of all knowledge

Five pillars plus one?

Here at Wikipedia we cherish some fundamental principles, the so-called Wikipedia:Five Pillars. However, what is the purpose of Wikipedia? There the Pillars are silent. The Bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation might help us out, so that we could jokingly formulate yet another Pillar. If you like, you could take a look at

• Five Pillars plus one

Bibliothecariorum leges tres

Bibliothecariorum leges in rebus Vicimediae quoque culturae generalis sunt tres:

• Lex I - In cura artis et scientiae licet audere numquam.
• Lex II - Quod si quis non accipit responsum ad quaestionem, post duas hebdomades oportet iterare quaestionem.
• Lex III - Rectum esse non aequalis est justificari.

(Free translation from the original first century BC? somewhat pedantic Latin: There are three librarians' laws on Wikimedia and also culture in general:

• First Law - For the sake of art and science boldness is sometimes allowed.
• Second Law - If one does not receive an answer to a query, one should repeat the query after two weeks / send a reminder after two weeks.
• Third Law - Being right is not the same as being put in the right.)

Burke quote

Although i might not support conservative Edmund Burke's thoughts in general, i like his following upbeat quote, perhaps relevant to Wikipedia, from A vindication of Natural Society (1756):

(quoted in Herrnstein & Murray: The Bell curve, The Free Press 1994, N.Y.)

Second Amendment

A well regulated Wikipedia, being necessary to the education of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear two Arms, two Hands and ten Fingers for typing, shall not be infringed.

(Are non-Americans allowed this joke?)

What did we learn?

Daily we learn a lot at Wikipedias in many languages, we make mistakes but generally progress steadily, or at least somewhat. But on occasion there inevitably are snafus and doubts:

• Burn After Reading - What Did We Learn? on YouTube. UltraMiraculous, 2015. A final fragment of 27 s from the feature film Burn After Reading (2008) by the inestimable Coen Brothers. After a messy affair two CIA personnel evaluate.

Africanist joke

An animal fun fable and satire about myself as a Wikipedia buff in the Dutch tradition starting with Van den vos Reynaerde (around 1250), here using Swahili proverbs. And ... about my colleagues.

• Wikindovu

Some car mathematical physics

• Car mathematical physics

Devil's Guide To Wikipedia

The obvious pleasure of destruction is rampant among some aggressive Wikipedians.
How can we delete any text or image in the most cruel way?
Well, you can:

Entry Level

• Start a discussion about an article without giving time to respond, then quickly
  • Start a deletion discussion ( Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion#How_to_nominate_a_single_page_for_deletion)
• Alternatively propose deletion by Wikipedia:Proposed deletion, and inappropriately maintain the proposal when contested
• Propose a destructive merger with a related article but with a different scope
• Bring up irrelevant arguments for distraction
• Call anything you don't happen to like OR, meaning Original Research, even when there are plenty of references.
• Delete a valuable well-researched paragraph outright, with comment "Not encyclopedic", or even only "?". (Yes, it happens.)

Advanced

• Write your own (auto)biographical Wikipedia article using sockpuppets and become an admin (or in reverse order).
• On Wikimedia Commons refuse to acknowledge the legal permission by a donor, so that all material is deleted in time automatically in the end.
• As an admin, block a user for a frivolous reason without a hearing, attack the user page. Then become a member of the Arbitration Committee, and refuse to discuss your own blocking action and maintain the block (nl.wikipedia).
• Become an admin on multiple Wikimedia websites and transport your unreasonable vindictiveness for some reason to those websites (nl.wikipedia etc.).
• As a Wikimedia local Chapter, abuse homemade Safe Space rules to frivolously exclude and discriminate against Wikipedians, in violation of the local national Constitution.
• Complain to WMF Trust & Safety: they can issue an (inappropriate) warning to a victim of bullying ;-)
• .... (more to come ;-) However,

All sinners and bottomline

• We are all sinners, and You can be a devil too!
• On a positive note: Obviously, the bottom line of Wikipedia is still positive with many excellent texts and images surviving the onslaught.
• But ... dictatorships like Russia and China also are rather productive in the field of knowledge (science).

References