Huygens left his home in 1645 to study law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and, in 1647, he entered the College of Orange in Breda. He was dissatisfied with the university's approach to learning, however, and in 1649 he returned to The Hague. There he remained until 1666, living off an allowance from his wealthy father. Given the financial freedom to study as he pleased, Huygens began to perform some of his most important research. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, it was not unusual for a scientist to work in several different disciplines, attaining success in each. Such was the case with Huygens, who worked simultaneously in the fields of astronomy, physics, and applied mathematics.
In the early 1650s, Huygens spent much of his time learning to grind telescope lenses; though tutored by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), he was essentially self-taught in this art. By 1655 he had developed a new grinding technique that yielded lenses of unsurpassed clarity. Using his lenses, Huygens almost immediately discovered a large moon circling Saturn, which he named Titan.
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