Brill and Leiden University Libraries Join Forces to Publish the Codices Hugeniani Online

Leiden (NL) / Boston (USA) / Singapore (SG) - 25 November 2016

Brill and Leiden University Libraries are proud to present the publication of Codices Hugeniani Online, the fully digitized personal archive of Christiaan Huygens.

Brill and Leiden University Libraries have joined forces to digitize this important archive, allowing online access to a large community of scholars via BrillOnline Primary Sources. The Codices Hugeniani Online(COHU) offers the fully digitized archive of Christiaan Huygens (1629 - 1695), held at Leiden University Library. The archive includes notebooks and loose leafs with texts in the field of astronomy, mechanics, mathematics and music, as well as correspondence and annotated books.

Huygens was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist. He published major studies on mechanics and optics, and a pioneer work on games of chance. He is famous for his discovery of the rings of Saturn and its moon Titan, and for inventing the pendulum clock.

For over three centuries, many scholars have made the Codices Hugeniani the object of their research. The contents of the archive have been made partly accessible through the well-known Oeuvres complètes (a 19-volume 19^th-century reference work). More recently, the Codices Hugeniani were described in detail by Dr. Joella Yoder in her Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Christiaan Huygens (Brill, 2013). With COHU the full archive's contents are now easily accessible for the first time.

Marti Huetink, Publishing Director at Brill, commented: "Christiaan Huygens is probably internationally the best known Dutch scientist ever. Brill is proud to be able to publish his papers online, and to contribute to the study of his life and works."

Mart van Duijn, Curator of Western Manuscripts of Leiden University Libraries, commented: "Codices Hugeniani Online is not only a great tool for researchers because of the different search options it offers, it is also a treasure trove of magnificent documents and drawings of the discoveries and inventions made by Christiaan Huygens."

Advisors: André Bouwman, Chief Curator & Curator of Western Manuscripts of Leiden University Libraries, Mart van Duijn, Curator of Western Manuscripts of Leiden University Libraries, and Joella G. Yoder, Independent Scholar.

More information: Marti Huetink, Publishing Director at Brill, email: huetink@brill.com, phone: + 31 71 5353504, www.brill.com/cohu.

For customer queries and product trials, please contact your librarian, or send an email to our Sales Department at sales-us@brill.com (the Americas) or sales-nl@brill.com (Europe, Middle East, Africa & Asia-Pacific).

About Brill
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in 20 main subject areas, including Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Language & Linguistics, Biology, and International Law. With offices in Leiden and Boston and a representative office in Singapore, Brill today publishes 265 journals and around 1000 new books and reference works each year, available in both print and electronic form. Brill also markets a large number of primary source research collections and databases. The company's key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. For more information, visit www.brill.com.

About Leiden University Libraries
In spite of its venerable age (it was founded in 1587), UBL is one of the Netherlands' most innovative libraries. As a knowledge partner it supports scientific research and teaching with new services and will shortly be able to add to its facilities a new building to house its sizeable Asian collections (due to be completed in 2017). The library's special collections, including important Western and Oriental manuscripts, archives, letters, old prints, atlases and maps, drawings and photographs, are used extensively by Leiden academics and their students, and attract scholars from throughout the whole world.