, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Leyden, was born at
, professor of mathematics and
natural philosophy at Leyden, was born at Diemermeer, a
village near Amsterdam, Nov. 5, 1764. His father, by
trade a carpenter, having a great fondness for books, and
being tolerably well versed in the mathematics, instructed
his son himself till he attained his eleventh year, who appears to have exhibited very extraordinary proofs of genius
long before that time. When only three years old, his
mother put into his hand some prints, which had fifty
verses at the bottom of them by way of explanation. These
verses she read aloud, without any intention that her son
should learn them, but was much surprized some time after
to hear him repeat the whole from memory, with the utmost correctness, on being only shown the prints. Before
he was seven years old he had read more than fifty different
books, and in such a manner that he could frequently repeat passages from them both in prose and in verse.
When about the age of eight, Mr. Aenese of Amsterdam,
one of the greatest calculators of the age, asked him if he
could tell the solid contents of a wooden statue of Mercury
which stood upon a piece of clock-work. “Yes,
” replied
young Nieuwland, “provided you give me a bit of the
same wood of which the statue was made for I will cut a
cubic inch out of it, and then compare it with the statue.
”
Poems which (says his eulogist) display the utmost liveliness of imagination, and which he composed in his tenth
year, while walking or amusing himself near his father’s
house, were received with admiration, and inserted in different poetical collections.
Such an uncommon genius must soon burst through
those obstacles which confine it. Bernardus and Jeronirao
de Bosch, two opulent gentlemen of Amsterdam, became
young Nieuwland’s patrons, and he was taken into the
house of the former in his eleventh year, and received
daily instruction from the latter for the space of four years.
While in this situation he made considerable progress in
the Latin and Greek languages, and studied philosophy
and the mathematics under Wyttenbach. In 1733 he
translated the two dissertations of his celebrated instructors Wyttenbach and de Bosch, on the opinions which the
ancients entertained of the state of the soul after death,
which had gained the prize of the Teylerian theological
society. From September 1784 to 1785 he studied at
Leyden, and afterwards applied with great diligence at
Amsterdam to natural philosophy, and every branch of the
mathematics, under the direction of professor Van Swinden. He had scarcely begun to turn his attention to chemistry, when he made himself master of Lavoisier’s theory,
and could apply it to every phenomenon.