(My answer on Quora)
Both Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens were brilliant minds. Where they primarily clashed was on the fundamental nature of light.
Isaac Newton source: World News, Economics and Analysis Based on Bible Prophecy
Christiaan Huygens source: ThoughtCo
Newton believed that light was made up of tint particles called corpuscles that could account for such phenomena as Reflection, Refraction and Rectilinear Propagation.
Huygens favored a wave model where each wave front consisted of wavelets that were the source for the next wave front that propagated forward. Light rays represented the direction of wave propagation.
He believed that all of the properties of light including diffraction could be explained with such a model.
Source: Olympus Science
Huygens Principle and Interference source: Physics Stack Exchange
The deadlock existed until the very early 19th century when Thomas Young carried out his famous Double Slit Experiment. Young was able to produce the characteristic wave interference pattern(alternating bands of maxima and minima) that is the definitive signature for wave like behavior.
Young’s Double Slit Experiment yields definite Interference Pattern source: lumenlearning.com
This implied that in the world of classical physics Huygens was correct - Light is a wave.
In the world of modern physics we now know that light has both a particle and wave nature and exhibits what we called Wave-Particle Duality. Light particles (photons) are however very different to Newton’s original Corpuscles or Billiard balls.
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