Brief Lives, Vol. 2

Chapter 22: Ludolph van Keulen (1554?-1610).

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About This Book

A collection of concise biographical sketches of contemporaries and earlier figures recorded by an antiquarian observer, combining factual entries—births, offices, publications, and inscriptions—with personal anecdotes, hearsay, heraldic and parish-register notes, bibliographic references, and occasional critical judgments. Entries range from terse records to extended reminiscences, often citing documentary sources or witness statements, and reflect an informal, detail-driven approach aimed at preserving lives, reputations, and local traditions for reference and remembrance.

Ludolph van Keulen (1554?-1610).

[91]Ludolphus van Ceulin was first, by profession, a fencing-master; but becomeing deafe, he betooke himselfe to the studie of the mathematiques wherin he became famous.

He wrote a learned booke, printed at ... in 4to of the proportion of the diameter of a circle to the peripherie: before which is his picture, and round about it in the compartiment are swords and bucklers and holberts, etc.,—weapons: the reason wherof I understood not till D^r. John Pell gave the aforesaid account, who had it from Sir Francis Godolphin, who had been his scholar as to fencing and boarded in his house.

He dyed at Leyden anno ..., aetat. 56, as I remember (vide); and on his monument, according to his last will, is engraved the proportion abovesayd, which is....