Simon Stevin

Simon Stevin, who lived from 1548 to 1620 and was sometimes called Stevinus, was a Flemish mathematician, scientist and music theorist. He is assumed to have been born in Bruges, enrolled at Leiden University in 1583 and became the principal adviser and tutor of Prince Maurice of Orange, who made him director of the waterstaet, the government authority for public works and water management, and later quartermaster-general of the army of the States-General. He contributed to mathematics, physics and hydraulic engineering, improved the windmills used to pump water out of the polders, and designed a land yacht, a sailing carriage that outran horses on the beach at Scheveningen. He also gave Dutch the word wiskunde for mathematics, and is remembered for his early systematic account of decimal fractions, although earlier Islamic scholars had introduced them.