Rudolph Snellius

Rudolph Snel van Royen (1546 to 1613), Latinized as Rudolphus Snellius, was a Dutch linguist and mathematician who held posts at the University of Marburg and the University of Leiden. Born in Oudewater into a wealthy family in the Utrecht region, he studied at Cologne under Valentin Naboth and at Heidelberg under Immanuel Tremellius, and soon received a teaching post at Marburg. Trained in Aristotelian logic, he had come to admire the new logic of Petrus Ramus, which he taught along with mathematics and languages. In 1578 he returned to Oudewater, which had just been devastated in a Spanish siege, and accepted a professorship of Hebrew and mathematics at Leiden, where he taught until his death. He was the father of Willebrord Snellius and an influence on leading figures of the Dutch Golden Age, among them Jacobus Arminius.