Education
Leiden University.
mathematician university professor
Leiden University.
His most important work is the Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, (Leiden, 1653), which, based on the Sihah of First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Jauhari, was only superseded by the corresponding work of Freytag in 1837. Golius came to the University of Leiden in 1612 to study mathematics. In 1618 he registered again to study Arabic and other Eastern languages, where he was the most distinguished pupil of Erpenius.
In 1622 he accompanied the Dutch embassy to Morocco, and on his return he was chosen to succeed Erpenius (May 12, 1625).
In the following year he set out on a Syrian and Arabian tour from which he did not return until 1629. The remainder of his life was spent at Leiden where he held the chair of mathematics as well as that of Arabic.
Golius taught mathematics to the French philosopher René Descartes, and later corresponded with him. lieutenant is therefore highly probable that he was able to read to him parts of the mathematical Arabic texts he had started to collect, among others on the Conics.
Jacobus Golius played a role in convincing Europeans about the Jesuits" discovery that the mysterious Cathay, visited by Marco Polo and other travelers in the 13th century was the same country as China, reached by the Portuguese sailors in the early 16th century.
Although Golius knew no Chinese, he was familiar with Zij-i Ilkhani, a work by the Persian astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, completed in 1272, in which he had described the "Cathayan" Calendar. As Golius started reciting the names of the 12 divisions into which, according to Nasir al-Din, the "Cathayans" were dividing the day, Martini, who of course knew no Persian, was able to continue the list. The names of the 24 solar terms reported by Nasir al-Din matched those that Martini had learned in China as well.
The story, soon published by Martini in the "Additamentum" to his Atlas of China (Novus Atlas Sinensis), seemed to have finally convinced most Europeans scholars that China and Cathay were the same.