Stevin was born in Bruges, Flanders, an illegitimate child of socially prominent parents. He began his career as a bookkeeper, but eventually traded a clerical life for one of science. He traveled widely, working as an engineer, and by 1581 he was a student at the University of Leiden. There he became an important part of the scientific and commercial renaissance that swept the Netherlands, beginning its golden age of prosperity. The works of antiquity had been newly rediscovered, and those of Euclid, Apollonius of Perga, and Archimedes would play a large part in his own scientific accomplishments. (He added to this cultural revival by translating the works of Diophantus for the first time.)

Stevin is best known as a contributor to two branches of physics: statics (the science of forces producing equilibrium) and hydrostatics. Like Rene Descartes and Galileo, Stevin wrote not in Latin but in his own...