Martinus Justinus Godefriedus "Tini" Veltman (Dutch: [ˈvɛltmɑn]; born June 27, 1931) is a Dutch theoretical physicist. He shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in physics with his former student Gerardus 't Hooft for their work on particle theory.
Martinus J.G. Veltman was born in Waalwijk, Netherlands on June 27, 1931. His father was the head of the local primary school. Three of his father's siblings were primary school teachers. His mother's father was a contractor and also ran a café. He was the fourth child in a family with six children. He started studying mathematics and physics at Utrecht University in 1948.
As a youth he had a great interest in radio electronics, which was a difficult hobby to work on because the occupying German army had confiscated most of the available radio equipment.
In 1955, he became an assistant to Prof. Michels of the Van Der Waals laboratory in Amsterdam. Michels was an experimental physicist, working in high pressure physics. His primary task was the upkeep of a large library collection and occasional lecture preparations for Michels.