The following list is composed of objects, concepts, phenomena and processes that were discovered or invented by people from the Netherlands.
Discoveries Archaeology
Java Man (Homo erectus erectus) (1891)
Java Man (Homo erectus erectus) is the name given to hominid fossils discovered in 1891 at Trinil – Ngawi Regency on the banks of the Solo River in East Java, Indonesia, one of the first known specimens of Homo erectus. Its discoverer, Dutch paleontologist Eugène Dubois, gave it the scientific name Pithecanthropus erectus, a name derived from Greek and Latin roots meaning upright ape-man.
Astronomy Columba (constellation) (1592)
Columba is a small, faint constellation named in the late sixteenth century. Its name is Latin for dove. It is located just south of Canis Major and Lepus. Columba was named by Dutch astronomer Petrus Plancius in 1592 in order to differentiate the 'unformed stars' of the large constellation Canis Major. Plancius first depicted Columba on the small celestial planispheres of his large wall map of 1592. It is also shown on his smaller world map of 1594 and on early Dutch celestial globes.
Novaya Zemlya effect (1597) The first person to record the Novaya Zemlya effect was Gerrit de Veer, a member of Willem Barentsz' ill-fated third expedition into the polar region. Novaya Zemlya, the archipelago where de Veer first observed the phenomenon, lends its name to the effect.
12 southern constellations (1597–1598) Plancius defined 12 constellations created by Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman.Ridpath, Ian (1988). Star Tales, p. 9–10Lankford, John (1997). History of Astronomy: An Encyclopedia, p. 161Stephenson, Bruce; Bolt, Marvin; Friedman, Anna Felicity (2000). The Universe Unveiled: Instruments and Images Through History, p. 24Kanas, Nick (2007). Star Maps: History, Artistry, and Cartography, p. 119–21Gendler, Robert; Christensen, Lars Lindberg; Malin, David (2011). Treasures of the Southern Sky, p. 14Simpson, Phil (2012). Guidebook to the Constellations: Telescopic Sights, Tales, and Myths, p. 559–61Ridpath, Ian (2012). A Dictionary of Astronomy (Oxford Paperback Reference), p. 96 Apus is a faint constellation in the southern sky, first defined in the late 16th century. Its name means "no feet" in Greek, and it represents a bird-of-paradise (once believed to lack feet). It first appeared on a 35 cm diameter celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. Chamaeleon is named after the chameleon, a kind of lizard. Dorado is now one of the 88 modern constellations. Dorado has been represented historically as a dolphinfish and a swordfish. Grus is Latin for the crane, a species of bird. The stars that form Grus were originally considered part of Piscis Austrinus (the southern fish). Hydrus name means "male water snake". Indus represents an Indian, a word that could refer at the time to any native of Asia or the Americas. Musca is one of the minor southern constellations. It first appeared on a 35-cm diameter celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius and Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer's Uranometria of 1603. Pavo is Latin for peacock. Phoenix is a minor southern constellation, named after the mythical phoenix. It was the largest of the twelve. Triangulum Australe is Latin for "the southern triangle", which distinguishes it from Triangulum in the northern sky and is derived from the almost equilateral pattern of its three brightest stars. It was first depicted on a celestial globe as Triangulus Antarcticus by Plancius in 1589, and later with more accuracy and its current name by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. Tucana is Latin for the toucan, a South American bird. Volans represents a flying fish; its name is a shortened form of its original name, Piscis Volans.
Camelopardalis (constellation) (1612–1613) Camelopardalis was created by Plancius in 1613 to represent the animal Rebecca rode to marry Isaac in the Bible. One year later, Jakob Bartsch featured it in his atlas. Johannes Hevelius gave it the official name of "Camelopardus" or "Camelopardalis" because he saw the constellation's many faint stars as the spots of a giraffe.
Monoceros (constellation) (1612–1613) Monoceros is a relatively modern creation. Its first certain appearance was on a globe created by Plancius in 1612 or 1613. It was later charted by Bartsch as Unicornus in his 1624 star chart.
Rings of Saturn (1655)
In 1655, Huygens became the first person to suggest that Saturn was surrounded by a ring, after Galileo's much less advanced telescope had failed to show rings. Galileo had reported the anomaly as possibly 3 planets instead of one.
Titan (Saturn's moon) (1655)
In 1655, using a 50 power refracting telescope that he designed himself, Huygens discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan.
Kapteyn's Star (1897) Kapteyn's Star is a class M1 red dwarf about 12.76 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pictor, and the closest halo star to the Solar System. With a magnitude of nearly 9 it is visible through binoculars or a telescope. It had the highest proper motion of any star known until the discovery of Barnard's Star in 1916. Attention was first drawn to what is now known as Kapteyn's Star by the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn, in 1897.
Discovery of evidence for galactic rotation (1904) In 1904, studying the proper motions of stars, Dutch astronomer Jacobus Kapteyn reported that these were not random, as it was believed in that time; stars could be divided into two streams, moving in nearly opposite directions. It was later realized that Kapteyn's data had been the first evidence of the rotation of our Galaxy, which ultimately led to the finding of galactic rotation by Bertil Lindblad and Jan Oort.
Galactic halo (1924) In 1924, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort discovered the galactic halo, a group of stars orbiting the Milky Way but outside the main disk.
Oort constants (1927) The Oort constants (discovered by Jan Oort) and are empirically derived parameters that characterize the local rotational properties of the Milky Way.
Evidence of dark matter (1932) In 1932, Dutch astronomer Jan Oort became the first person to discover evidence of dark matter. Oort proposed the substance after measuring the motions of nearby stars in the Milky Way relative to the galactic plane. He found that the mass of the galactic plane must be more than the mass of the material that can be seen. A year later (1933), Fritz Zwicky examined the dynamics of clusters of galaxies and found their movements similarly perplexing.
Discovery of methane in the atmosphere of Titan (1944) The first formal proof of the existence of an atmosphere around Titan came in 1944, when Gerard Kuiper observed Titan with the new McDonald telescope and discovered spectral signatures on Titan at wavelengths longer than 0.6 μm (micrometers), among which he identified two absorption bands of methane at 6190 and 7250 Å (Kuiper1944). This discovery was significant not only because it requires a dense atmosphere with a significant fraction of methane, but also because the atmosphere needs to be chemically evolved, since methane requires hydrogen in the presence of carbon, and molecular and atomic hydrogen would have escaped from Titan's weak gravitational field since the formation of the Solar System.Brown, Robert Hanbury; Lebreton, Jean-Pierre; Waite, John H. (2009). Titan from Cassini-Huygens, p. 10
Discovery of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars (1947) Using infrared spectrometry, in 1947 the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper detected carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere, a discovery of biological significance because it is a principal gas in the process of photosynthesis (see also: History of Mars observation). He was able to estimate that the amount of carbon dioxide over a given area of the surface is double that on the Earth.
Miranda (Uranus's moon) (1948) Miranda is the smallest and innermost of Uranus's five major moons. It was discovered by Gerard Kuiper on 16 February 1948 at McDonald Observatory.
Nereid (Neptune's moon) (1949) Nereid, also known as Neptune II, is the third-largest moon of Neptune and was its second moon to be discovered, on 1 May 1949, by Gerard Kuiper, on photographic plates taken with the 82-inch telescope at McDonald Observatory.
Oort cloud (1950) The Oort cloud or Öpik–Oort cloud, named after Dutch astronomer Jan Oort and Estonian astronomer Ernst Öpik, is a spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals believed to surround the Sun at a distance of up to . Further evidence for the existence of the Kuiper belt emerged from the study of comets. That comets have finite lifespans has been known for some time. As they approach the Sun, its heat causes their volatile surfaces to sublimate into space, gradually evaporating them. In order for comets to continue to be visible over the age of the Solar System, they must be replenished frequently. One such area of replenishment is the Oort cloud, a spherical swarm of comets extending beyond 50,000 AU from the Sun first hypothesised by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1950. The Oort cloud is believed to be the point of origin of long-period comets, which are those, like Hale–Bopp, with orbits lasting thousands of years.
Kuiper belt (1951) The Kuiper belt was named after Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, regarded by many as the father of modern planetary science, though his role in hypothesising it has been heavily contested. In 1951, he proposed the existence of what is now called the Kuiper Belt, a disk-shaped region of minor planets outside the orbit of Neptune, which also is a source of short-period comets.
Biology Function of the fallopian tubes (1660s) Dutch physician and anatomist Regnier de Graaf may have been the first to understand the reproductive function of the fallopian tubes. He described the hydrosalpinx, linking its development to female infertility. de Graaf recognized pathologic conditions of the tubes. He was aware of tubal pregnancies, and he surmised that the mammalian egg traveled from the ovary to the uterus through the tube.
Development of ovarian follicles (1672) In his De Mulierum Organis Generatione Inservientibus (1672), de Graaf provided the first thorough description of the female gonad and established that it produced the ovum. De Graaf used the terminology vesicle or egg (ovum) for what now called the ovarian follicle. Because the fluid-filled ovarian vesicles had been observed previously by others, including Andreas Vesalius and Falloppio, De Graaf did not claim their discovery. He noted that he was not the first to describe them, but to describe their development. De Graaf was the first to observe changes in the ovary before and after mating and describe the corpus luteum. From the observation of pregnancy in rabbits, he concluded that the follicle contained the oocyte. The mature stage of the ovarian follicle is called the Graafian follicle in his honour, although others, including Fallopius, had noticed it previously but failed to recognize its reproductive significance.
Foundations of microbiology (discovery of microorganisms) (1670s)