Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Geometry
• Topology
• Trignometry
• Combinatorics
• Logic
• Number theory

Applied mathematics

• Dynamical systems and differential equations
• Mathematical physics
• Computing
• Information theory and signal processing
• Probability and statistics
• Game theory
• Operations research

Related Topics

• Electromagnetic Spectrum
• Linear Equations
• Applied Physics
• Nano Technology
• Engineering Sciences
• Mathematical Medicine
• Fluid dynamics
• Computational Mathematics
• Gamma Ray Optics
• Onfrared Optics
• Relative Velocity
• Iciam
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• 
  

• 
  Aarhus University
  Aarhus University (Danish: Aarhus Universitet) (abbr.: AU), located in the city of Aarhus, Denmark, is Denmark's second oldest and largest university. The university was founded in 1928 and has 43,600 students.
  Denmark's first professor of sociology was a member of the faculty of Aarhus University (Theodor Geiger, from 1938–1952), and in 1997 Professor Jens Christian Skou received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the sodium-potassium pump. In 2010 Dale T. Mortensen, a Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at Aarhus University, received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences together with his colleagues Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides.
  Aarhus University was founded on September 11, 1928 as Universitetsundervisningen i Jylland ('University Teaching in Jutland') with an enrollment of 64 students. Classrooms were rented from the Technical College and the teaching corps consisted of one professor of philosophy and four associate professors of Danish, English, German, and French. Until then the University of Copenhagen was the only university in Denmark.
  
  wn.com/Aarhus_University
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  Dutch Republic
  The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden), the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën) — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and ultimately the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands. Alternative names include the United Provinces, Foederatae Belgii Provinciae (Federated Belgic Provinces), and Belgica Foederata (Belgic Federation).
  Until the 16th century, the Low Countries – roughly now corresponding to Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – consisted of a number of duchies, counties and bishoprics, most of which were under the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire.
  Most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg. In 1549 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which further unified the Seventeen Provinces under his rule. Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain. In 1568 the Netherlands, led by William I of Orange, revolted against Philip II because of high taxes, persecution of Protestants by the government, and Philip's efforts to modernize and centralize the devolved-medieval government structures of the provinces. This was the start of the Eighty Years' War.
  
  wn.com/Dutch_Republic
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  Egypt
  Egypt ⁱ/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (Arabic: مصر, Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: [mɑsˤɾ] ; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, Kīmi ; Sahidic Coptic: ⲕⲏⲙⲉ, Kēme), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic:  جمهوريّة مصر العربيّة (help·info), is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
  Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its over 81 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
  
  wn.com/Egypt
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  India
  India (ⁱ/ˈɪndiə/), officially the Republic of India (Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the south-west, and the Bay of Bengal on the south-east, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west;China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north-east; and Burma and Bangladesh to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; in addition, India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.
  Home to the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation and a region of historic trade routes and vast empires, the Indian subcontinent was identified with its commercial and cultural wealth for much of its long history. Four of the world's major religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism—originated here, whereas Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived in the 1st millennium CE and also helped shape the region's diverse culture. Gradually annexed by and brought under the administration of the British East India Company from the early 18th century and administered directly by the United Kingdom from the mid-19th century, India became an independent nation in 1947 after a struggle for independence that was marked by non-violent resistance led by Mahatma Gandhi.
  
  wn.com/India
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  Istanbul University
  Istanbul University (Turkish: İstanbul Üniversitesi) is a prominent Turkish university located in Istanbul. The main campus is adjacent to Beyazıt Square.
  The precursor of Istanbul University was the University of Constantinople, sometimes known as the University of the palace hall of Magnaura. In the Roman-Byzantine Empire it was founded in 425 under the name of Pandidakterion. The original school was founded in 425 by Emperor Theodosius II with 31 chairs for law, philosophy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, rhetoric and other subjects, 15 to Latin and 16 to Greek. The university existed until the 15th century.
  After the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople a madrasa, a religious school, was established. An institution of higher education named the Darülfünun-i Osmani ('House of Sciences') was created in 1863, but suppressed in 1871. Its first rector was Hasan Tahsini, regarded as one of the most important Ottoman scholars of the 19th century. In 1874 the Imperial University (Darülfünun-i Sultani) started to give lectures in law in French, but was closed in 1881.
  
  wn.com/Istanbul_University
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  Japan
  Japan ⁱ/dʒəˈpæn/ (Japanese: 日本 Nihon or Nippon; formally 日本国  Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku, literally the State of Japan) is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin", which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
  Japan is an archipelago of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshū, Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku, together accounting for ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population, with over 127 million people. The Greater Tokyo Area, which includes the de facto capital city of Tokyo and several surrounding prefectures, is the largest metropolitan area in the world, with over 30 million residents.
  Archaeological research indicates that people lived in Japan as early as the Upper Paleolithic period. The first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other nations followed by long periods of isolation has characterized Japan's history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since adopting its revised constitution in 1947, Japan has maintained a unitary constitutional monarchy with an emperor and an elected parliament called the Diet.
  
  wn.com/Japan
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  KITLV
  The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (Dutch: Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, abbreviated: KITLV) at Leiden was founded in 1851. Its objective is the advancement of the study of the anthropology, linguistics, social sciences, and history of Southeast Asia, the Pacific Area, and the Caribbean. Special emphasis is laid on the former Dutch colonies of Indonesia, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Its unique collection of books, manuscripts, prints and photographs attracts visiting scholars from all over the world. The acronym "KITLV" stands for, in Dutch, "Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde".
  In 1969 a KITLV-department was started by Hans Ras in Jakarta, as a part of an agreement with Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia (LIPI, the Indonesian Institute for Sciences). Here, publications from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are bought and given a place in the library of the institute, publications of the institute are sold, and original scientific works in the Dutch language are translated into Indonesian.
  
  wn.com/KITLV
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  Leiden
  Leiden (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈlɛi̯.də(n)] ( listen); in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the Dutch province of South Holland. The municipality of Leiden has a population of about 120,000, but the city forms one densely connected urban area with its suburbs Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, which have about 254,000 inhabitants combined. The larger Leiden agglomeration counts 332,000 inhabitants which makes it the sixth major agglomeration in the Netherlands. Leiden is located on the Old Rhine, at a distance of some 20 kilometers from The Hague to its south and some 40 kilometers from Amsterdam to its north. The recreational area of the Kaag Lakes (Kagerplassen) lies just to the northeast of Leiden.
  A university city since 1575, Leiden houses Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Centre. It is twinned with Oxford, the location of England's oldest university.
  It is true that Leiden is an old city, its connection with Roman Lugdunum Batavorum is true though it is actually near the close-by town of Katwijk, whereas the Roman settlement near modern Leiden was called Matilo. However, there was a Roman fortress in Leiden in the 4th century.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Leiden
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  Leiden Observatory
  Leiden Observatory (Sterrewacht Leiden in Dutch) is an astronomical observatory in the city of Leiden, Netherlands. It was established by Leiden University in 1633, to house the quadrant of Snellius, and is the oldest operating University observatory in the world (before this, astronomy taught at medieval universities tended to be of a more theoretical nature, and any observations were usually done with private equipment rather than at University observatories —see this timeline).
  The original observatory used observing platforms on the roof of the main university building at the Rapenburg. In 1860 a large, modern observatory was erected at the Witte Singel. This building was the home of the astronomy department until it moved to the science campus north-west of the city centre in 1974. Although professional astronomical observations are no longer carried out from Leiden itself, the department still calls itself Leiden Observatory. Today's astronomers instead travel to the big observatories, e.g. ESO's VLT in Chile.
  
  wn.com/Leiden_Observatory
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  Leiden University
  Leiden University (Dutch: Universiteit Leiden), located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close relationship. The Queens Juliana and Beatrix and crown-prince Willem-Alexander studied at Leiden University. In 2005 Queen Beatrix received a rare honorary degree from Leiden University.
  Leiden University has six faculties, over 50 departments and more than 150 undergraduate programmes and enjoys an outstanding international reputation. Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranks Leiden University as the 65th best university worldwide. Times Higher Education World University Rankings consistently rank Leiden University as the best university in Continental Europe for Arts and Humanities. The University is associated with at least sixteen recipients of the Nobel Prize. The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group, the Europaeum and the League of European Research Universities.
  
  wn.com/Leiden_University
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  Lund University
  Lund University (Swedish: Lunds universitet) is one of Europe's most prestigious universities and Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, consistently ranked among the world's top 100 universities. The university, located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, traces its roots back to 1425, when a Franciscan studium generale was founded in Lund next to the Lund Cathedral, making it the oldest institution of higher education in Scandinavia followed by studium generales in Uppsala in 1477 and Copenhagen in 1479. The current university was founded in 1666 after Sweden had won Scania in the 1658 peace agreement with Denmark.
  Lund University has eight faculties, with additional campuses in the cities of Malmö and Helsingborg, with 47,000 students in more than 280 different programmes and around 2,250 separate courses. The University has some 680 partner universities in over 50 countries and it belongs to the League of European Research Universities as well as the global Universitas 21 network.
  
  wn.com/Lund_University
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  Netherlands
  The Netherlands (ⁱ/ˈnɛðərləndz/; Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdə(r)lɑnt] or [ˈneɪ̯də(r)lɑnt] ( listen); West Frisian: Nederlân; Papiamento: Hulanda) is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with some islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is a parliamentary democracy organised as a unitary state. The country capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague. The Netherlands in its entirety is often referred to as Holland, although North and South Holland are actually only two of its twelve provinces (a case of pars pro toto; see terminology of "the Netherlands").
  
  wn.com/Netherlands
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  Tilburg University
  Tilburg University (TiU) is a research university, specializing in the social and behavioral sciences, economics, law, business sciences, theology and humanities, located in Tilburg in the southern part of the Netherlands.
  Tilburg University has a student population of about 13,000 students, about 8 per cent of whom are international students. This percentage has steadily increased over the past years. TiU offers both Dutch-taught and English-taught programs.
  The institution has gained a reputation in both research and education. In the field of economics, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration ranked #1 in Europe for the second consecutive time in 2007 according to the Journal of the European Economic Association with regard to publications in top journals. In 2007 the Executive MBA program at the university's TiasNimbas Business School ranked # 11 in the world according to the Financial Times. In the field of law, Tilburg University was ranked #1 in the Netherlands for the last three years according to Elsevier Magazine. . Further, the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences offers a unique two-year master program in Medical Psychology (in Dutch), in which students are trained as scientist practitioners in the medical setting.
  
  wn.com/Tilburg_University
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  University of Bergen
  The University of Bergen (Norwegian: Universitetet i Bergen) is located in Bergen, Norway. Although founded as late as 1946, academic activity had taken place at Bergen Museum as far back as 1825. The university today serves more than 14,500 students. It is one of eight universities in Norway, the other seven being the University of Oslo, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, the University of Tromsø, the University of Stavanger, the University of Agder, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås and the University of Nordland in Bodø.
  Home students (European citizens) do not pay fees to the university. Students are however required to be members of the student welfare organisation. As of Fall 2009, this fee (semesteravgift) is NOK 470 (approx. US$ 80) per semester, and provides access to several services, including cultural activities, childcare, refunds for many medical expenses and subsidized accommodation.
  In 2010 the university was ranked as number 135 worldwide by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, and 121st worldwide by the 2011 QS World University Rankings. UiB was also ranked number 148 worldwide in the July 2010 Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Bergen
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  University of Bonn
  The University of Bonn (German: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number of undergraduate and graduate programs in a range of subjects. Its library holds more than two million volumes. The University of Bonn has 525 professors and 27,800 students. Among its notable alumni and faculty are seven Nobel Laureates, two Fields Medalists, twelve Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners, Pope Benedict XVI, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche and Joseph Schumpeter. In the years 2010 and 2011, the Times Higher Education ranked the University of Bonn as one of the 200 best universities in the world.
  The university's forerunner was the Kurkölnische Akademie Bonn (English: Academy of the Prince-elector of Cologne) which was founded in 1777 by Maximilian Frederick of Königsegg-Rothenfels, the prince-elector of Cologne. In the spirit of the Enlightenment the new academy was nonsectarian. The academy had schools for theology, law, pharmacy and general studies. In 1784 Emperor Joseph II granted the academy the right to award academic degrees (Licentiat and Ph.D.), turning the academy into a university. The academy was closed in 1798 after the left bank of the Rhine was occupied by France during the French Revolutionary Wars.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Bonn
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  University of Bremen
  The University of Bremen (German Universität Bremen) is a university of approximately 23,500 people from 126 countries^{[citation needed]} that are studying, teaching, researching, and working in Bremen, Germany. It was publicly founded in 1971.
  The university has most notably reputation in industrial engineering, digital media, physics, mathematics, microbiology, geosciences (particularly marine geosciences) European law and political science .^{[citation needed]}
  Its commitment was rewarded with the title “Stadt der Wissenschaft 2005” (City of Science of 2005), which science, politics, business and culture won jointly for Bremen and Bremerhaven, by the Foundation for German Science (Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft).
  Some of the paths that were taken back then, also referred to as the "Bremen model", have since become characteristics of modern universities, such as interdisciplinary, explorative learning, social relevance to practice-oriented project studies which enjoy a high reputation in the academic world as well as in business and industry. Other reform approaches of the former ‘new university’ have proven to be errors such as waiving a mid-level faculty, tripartite representation or too “student-friendly” examination regulations and were given up in Bremen a few years down the track.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Bremen
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  University of Graz
  The University of Graz (German, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz), a university located in Graz, Austria, is the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria.
  Karl-Franzens-Universität, also referred to as the University of Graz, is the city's oldest university, founded in 1585 by Archduke Charles II of Austria. For most of its existence it was controlled by the Catholic Church, and was closed in 1782 by Emperor Joseph II in an attempt to gain state control over educational institutions. Joseph II transformed it into a lyceum where civil servants and medical personnel were trained. In 1827 it was re-instituted as a university by Emperor Francis I, thus gaining the name Karl-Franzens-Universität, meaning Charles Francis University. Over 22,000 students are currently enrolled at this university.
  Ludwig Boltzmann was professor at the Karl-Franzens Universität twice (1869–1873 and 1876–1890) developing his statistical theory of heat. Nobel Laureate Otto Loewi taught at the University of Graz from 1909 until 1938. Victor Franz Hess (Nobel prize 1936) graduated in Graz and taught here (1920–1931, 1937–1938). Erwin Schrödinger was briefly chancellor of the University of Graz in 1936.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Graz
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  University of Jena
  Friedrich Schiller University of Jena (FSU) (German Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, colloquially Uni Jena), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany.
  The university was established in 1558 and is counted among the ten oldest universities in Germany. In 1934, the university was renamed after the writer Friedrich Schiller who was teaching as professor of history when Jena attracted some of the most influential minds at the turn of the 19th century. With Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, F. W. J. Schelling and Friedrich von Schlegel on its teaching staff, the university has been at the centre of the emergence of German idealism and early Romanticism.
  As of 2009, the university has around 21,000 students enrolled and 340 professors. Its current rector, Klaus Dicke, is the 317th rector in the history of the university.
  The university is organised into the following ten faculties:
  The elector John Frederick, Elector of Saxony first thought of a plan to establish a university at Jena in 1547 while he was being held captive by emperor Charles V. The plan was put into motion by his three sons and, after having obtained a charter from the emperor Ferdinand I, the university was established on 2 February 1558.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Jena
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  University of Leiden
  Leiden University (Dutch: Universiteit Leiden), located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close relationship. The Queens Juliana and Beatrix and crown-prince Willem-Alexander studied at Leiden University. In 2005 Queen Beatrix received a rare honorary degree from Leiden University.
  Leiden University has six faculties, over 50 departments and more than 150 undergraduate programmes and enjoys an outstanding international reputation. Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2011 Academic Ranking of World Universities ranks Leiden University as the 65th best university worldwide. Times Higher Education World University Rankings consistently rank Leiden University as the best university in Continental Europe for Arts and Humanities. The University is associated with at least sixteen recipients of the Nobel Prize. The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group, the Europaeum and the League of European Research Universities.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Leiden
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  University of Milan
  The University of Milan (Italian: Università degli Studi di Milano, "Statale") is a higher education institution in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with about 65,000 students, a permanent teaching and research staff of about 2,200 and a non-teaching staff of 2,200.
  The University of Milan have 9 schools and offers 134 undergraduate and graduate courses, 21 Doctoral Schools and 92 Specialization Schools. The University's research and teaching activities have developed over the years and have received important international recognitions. The University is the only Italian member of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), a group of twenty-two research-intensive European Universities. It is also the best university in Italy in several rankings.
  Throughout Milan, the University is commonly nicknamed and referred to as Statale (state) to avoid confusion with other private universities in the city, such as the Bocconi University, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and the Free University of Languages and Communication (IULM).
  
  wn.com/University_of_Milan
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  University of Oxford
  Coordinates: 51°45′40″N 1°15′12″W / 51.7611°N 1.2534°W / 51.7611; -1.2534
  The University of Oxford (informally Oxford University or Oxford) is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096. The University grew rapidly from 1167 when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. In post-nominals, the University of Oxford was historically abbreviated as Oxon. (from the Latin Oxoniensis), although Oxf is now used in official university publications.
  After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled north-east to Cambridge, where they established what became the University of Cambridge. The two ancient English universities have many common features and are often jointly referred to as Oxbridge. In addition to their cultural and practical associations, as a historic part of British society, they have a long history of rivalry with each other.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Oxford
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  University of Pavia
  The University of Pavia (Italian: Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. It was founded in 1361 and is organized in 9 Faculties.
  The University of Pavia is one of the oldest universities in Europe. An edict issued by the Frankish king of Italy Lothar I (ruled 818-55) mentions the existence of a higher education institution at Pavia as early as AD 825. This institution, mainly devoted to ecclesiastical and civil law as well as to divinity studies, was then selected as the prime educational centre for northern Italy. Officially established as a studium generale by the Holy Roman emperor Charles IV (r. 1355-78) in 1361, the institution was enlarged and renovated by the duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti (ruled 1385-1402), becoming the Duchy's sole university.
  In 1858, the University was the scene of intense student protests against Austrian rule in northern Italy (through the puppet kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia). The authorities responded by ordering the university's temporary closure. The incidents at Pavia were typical of the wave of nationalist demonstrations all over Italy that immediately preceded the Unification of Italy (1859-66).
  
  wn.com/University_of_Pavia
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  University of Tartu
  The University of Tartu (Estonian: Tartu Ülikool, Latin: Universitas Tartuensis) is a classical university in the city of Tartu, Estonia. University of Tartu is the national university of Estonia; it is the biggest and highest-ranked university in Estonia. The University of Tartu is a member of the Coimbra Group and the Utrecht Network, and was established by King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, thus being one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe.
  The Academia Gustaviana in the then Swedish province of Livonia was the second university founded in the Swedish Empire, following Uppsala University (in Uppsala, Sweden proper) and preceding the Academy of Åbo (in Turku, Finland). A precursor to the academy had been a Jesuit grammar school Gymnasium Dorpatense, founded by Stefan Batory (then king of Poland) in 1583 and existing to 1601, when Tartu (Dorpat) was under Polish rule.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Tartu
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  University of Turku
  The University of Turku (Finnish Turun yliopisto, Swedish Åbo universitet), located in Turku in southwestern Finland, is the second largest university in the country as measured by student enrollment, after University of Helsinki. It was established in 1920 and also has faculties at Rauma, Pori and Salo. The university is a member of the Coimbra Group.
  The first university to be established in Turku was The Royal Academy of Turku, in 1640, which was transferred to the new Capital, Helsinki, after the Great Fire of Turku in 1827.
  Three famous Finns began their studies in Turku in 1822. These were Johan Vilhelm Snellman, Elias Lönnrot, and Johan Ludvig Runeberg who have a statue on University Hill. Another reminder of the Royal Academy is the Old Academy Building near the University's campus.
  The modern University of Turku was founded in 1920. The Finnish intelligentsia wanted a purely Finnish university, the first of its kind in Finland. 22,040 people contributed to the fund-raising campaign. Newly gained independence and the campaign are reflected in the motto of the University about a free people's gift to free science. To honour the memory of these donors, the University has named its specially created liqueur "22 040". Developed by the University's own food chemists, the liqueur does homage to some of the distinctive fruits of the Finnish landscape: the cloudberry, the rowan and the sea buckthorn.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Turku
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  University of Twente
  University of Twente (Dutch: Universiteit Twente) is a university located in Enschede, Netherlands. It offers research and degree programmes in the social and behavioral sciences and in engineering. In keeping with its entrepreneurial spirit, the University is committed to making economic and social contribution to the region of the Netherlands where it is based. The UT collaborates with Delft University of Technology and Eindhoven University of Technology under the umbrella of the 3TU.Federation, and is also a partner in the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU).
  The University was founded in 1961 as the Technische Hogeschool Twente, the Netherlands’ third higher vocational institute of technology later to become a university (the other two being Delft and Eindhoven). The Dutch government’s decision to locate the new institute in Enschede, the main city of Twente, had much to do with the north-eastern province’s rich industrial history. Another important consideration was the fact that the local economy needed a boost to compensate for the dwindling textile industry.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Twente
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  University of Vaasa
  The University of Vaasa (Finnish: Vaasan yliopisto, Swedish: Vasa universitet) is a multidisciplinary, business-oriented university in Vaasa, Finland. The campus of the university is situated by the Gulf of Bothnia adjacent to downtown Vaasa. The university has evolved from a school of economics founded in 1968 to a university consisting of three faculties: Faculty of Business Studies, Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Technology. With its Faculty of Business Studies, also called the Vaasa School of Economics, University of Vaasa is one of the largest business universities in Finland. The university has 425 personnel which includes a teaching staff of 180 and 54 professors. Around 5000 students are currently studying in various degree programs at the university.
  Faculty of Business Studies
  Faculty of Philosophy
  Faculty of Technology
  Faculty of Business Studies
  Faculty of Philosophy
  Faculty of Technology
  In 1966 the Council of State made the decision to establish a School of Economics and Business Administration in Vaasa, and so Vaasa got its first institution of higher education which the region of Vaasa had worked for since the 1940's. The very next year the first students started their studies; 90 business and 60 correspondence students. The first principal to be chosen for the school was Tryggve Saxén and the first vice principal was Mauri Palomäki, who later would become the longest serving principal the school has seen so far. The lectures were first held in a yard building of Vaasa Commercial College in Raastuvankatu street, but in its second year the school moved into the whole house as the commercial college moved to a new building.
  
  wn.com/University_of_Vaasa
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  Uppsala University
  Uppsala University (Swedish: Uppsala universitet) is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the oldest university in Sweden, founded in 1477. It ranks among the best universities in Northern Europe in international rankings and is generally considered one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in Europe.
  The university rose to pronounced significance during the rise of Sweden as a great power at the end of the 16th century and was then given a relative financial stability with the large donation of King Gustavus Adolphus in the early 17th century. Uppsala also has an important historical place in Swedish national culture, identity and for the Swedish establishment: in historiography, literature, politics, and music. Many aspects of Swedish academic culture in general, such as the white student cap, originated in Uppsala. It shares some peculiarities, such as the student nation system, with Lund University and the University of Helsinki.
  Uppsala belongs to the Coimbra Group of European universities. The university has nine faculties distributed over three 'disciplinary domains'. It has about 20 000 full-time students, and about 2,000 doctoral students. It has a teaching staff of 4,000 (part-time and full-time) out of a total of 6,000 employees. Of its annual turnover of around 4.3 billion SEK (approx. 715 million USD), approximately 60% goes to graduate studies and research.
  
  wn.com/Uppsala_University
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  Vrije Universiteit
  The Vrije Universiteit (literal translation from Dutch: "Free [as in liberty] University") is a university in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch name is often abbreviated as VU and in English the university uses the name "VU University". The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern part of Amsterdam in the Buitenveldert district. Though a faith-based institution, the VU receives government funding on a parity basis with the public universities.
  The university should not be confused with the University of Amsterdam, which is a different university, located in the same city. That university was formerly owned and operated by the City of Amsterdam, but is now one of the public universities in the Netherlands.
  The VU has about 22,738 students, most of whom are full-time students. The number of faculty members and researchers is 2,764 (excluding personnel at VU University Medical Center). Teaching and research activities are supported by 1,905 administrative, clerical, technical, and other employees. The university's annual budget is around US$500 million, about two thirds of which comes from the Dutch government. Tuition, research grants, and industrial contracts provide the rest.
  
  wn.com/Vrije_Universiteit
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  Zeppelin University
  Zeppelin University (ZU) is a highly-selective, top-ranked, privately-funded research university in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The university was founded in 2003.
  Zeppelin University has the legal form of a non-profit, limited liability organization and calls itself "university bridging business, culture and politics". Thus it stresses the multi-disciplinary character of research and teaching that is an integral part of its self-image. It is named after the German general and airship constructor Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, whose foundation is the main financier of Zeppelin University.
  Zeppelin University receives neither direct nor indirect support by either Baden-Württemberg or the federal state. Thus, at the moment Zeppelin University is the only private university in Germany that has been financed exclusively by private means, without being a burden to state or federal budgets.
  The university is accredited nationally by the Academic Council of the Federal Republic of Germany (Wissenschaftsrat). The undergraduate major courses are accredited by ACQUIN, a German higher education accreditation agency.
  
  wn.com/Zeppelin_University

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  Achmad Soebardjo
  Raden Achmad Soebardjo Djojoadisoerjo (Karawang Regency, West Java, 23 March 1896 – 15 December 1978) was a diplomat, one of Indonesia's founding fathers, and an Indonesian national hero. He was the first Foreign Minister of Indonesia. In 1933, he received the degree Meester in de Rechten from Leiden University, Netherland.
  Achmad Soebardjo was born in Teluk Jambe, Karawang Regency, West Java, on 23 March 1896. His father's name was Teuku Muhammad Yusuf, an Acehnese patrician from Pidie. His paternal grandfather was an ulama and his father was the chief of police in Teluk Jambe, Karawang. His mother's name was Wardinah. She was of Javanese-Buginese descent, and was daughter from Camat in Telukagung, Cirebon.
  Initially, his father gave him the name Teuku Abdul Manaf, but his mother gave him the name Ahmad Subardjo. Djojoadisoerjo was added by himself after he was arrested and imprisoned at Ponogoro Prison because of his involvement with the "July 3, 1946 Incident".
  He studied at Hogere Burger School, Jakarta in 1917. He continued to Leiden University, Netherlands and obtained the degree Meester in de Rechten title in the field of law in 1933.
  
  wn.com/Achmad_Soebardjo
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  Albert Einstein
  Albert Einstein ( /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn] ( listen); 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc² (which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation"), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect". The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory within physics.
  Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.
  
  wn.com/Albert_Einstein
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  Albert Szent-Györgyi
  Albert Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt (Hungarian: Nagyrápolti Szent-Györgyi Albert [ˈnɒɟraːpolti ˈsɛntˌɟørɟi ˈɒlbɛrt]; September 16, 1893 – October 22, 1986) was a Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with discovering vitamin C and the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle. He was also active in the Hungarian Resistance during World War II and entered Hungarian politics after the war.
  Szent-Györgyi was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian empire in 1893. His father, Miklós Szent-Györgyi, was a landowner, born in Marosvásárhely, Transylvania (today Târgu Mureş, Romania), a Calvinist, and could trace his ancestry back to 1608 when Sámuel, a Calvinist predicant, was ennobled. At the time of Szent-Georgyi's birth, the ability to trace one's ancestry was considered important and created opportunities that otherwise were not available. (Miklós Szent-Györgyi's parents were Imre Szent-Györgyi and Mária Csiky). His mother, Jozefina, a Roman Catholic, was a daughter of József Lenhossék and Anna Bossányi. Jozefina was a sister of Mihály Lenhossék; both of these men were Professors of Anatomy at the Eötvös Loránd University. His family included three generations of scientists. Music was important in the Lenhossék family. His mother Jozefina prepared to become an opera singer and auditioned for Gustav Mahler, then a conductor at the Budapest Opera. He advised her to marry instead, since her voice was not enough. Albert himself was good at the piano, while his brother Pál became a professional violinist.
  
  wn.com/Albert_Szent-Györgyi
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  Ana Dolidze
  Anna Dolidze (Georgian: ანა დოლიძე) is a public interest lawyer from Georgia. In 2004–2006 Dolidze was the President of the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association, the leading human rights organization in Georgia. Dolidze targeted legal reform, advocated for government transparency, accountability, and criminal justice reform. Dolidze represented in court the victims of human rights abuses, including journalist Irakli Imnaishvili, "rebel judges" (four Justices of the Supreme Court that refused to resign under pressure), and Tamar Maisuradze, one of the main witnesses against high ranking security officials in the Sandro Girgvliani Murder Case. Anna Dolidze was a leader of the social movement to punish murderers of Sandro Girgvliani.
  She served on boards of a number of important organizations in Georgia such as the Georgia Media Council, the Stakeholders Committee of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Georgia, the Human Rights Monitoring Council of the Penitentiary and Detention Places, and the National Commission against Trafficking in Persons.
  
  wn.com/Ana_Dolidze
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  Armin van Buuren
  Armin van Buuren (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɑr.mɪn vɑn ˈby.rə(n)]), OON (born 25 December 1976 in Leiden, Netherlands) is a Dutch trance producer and DJ. Between 2007 and 2010, he was voted number one in DJ Magazine's annual top 100 list of the most popular DJs. In the 2011 list, he ranked in second place. Since 2001, Van Buuren has hosted a weekly radio show called A State of Trance, which claims to have around 15 million weekly listeners in 26 countries, which would make it one of the most listened-to radio shows in the world. His 2008 studio album, Imagine, entered the Dutch album chart at #1, a first for a dance music artist in Dutch music history.
  Armin van Buuren was born in Leiden, Netherlands on 25 December 1976, but grew up in Koudekerk aan den Rijn. Van Buuren started making music when he was 14.^{[citation needed]} He was inspired by French electronic music composer, Jean Michel Jarre, and wished to become a great electronic music composer like Jarre.^{[citation needed]}
  He finished high school at the Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden in 1995, and left for college to study law at Leiden University. While studying law, Van Buuren's interest for making music blossomed, and he began working as a DJ in a local club called Nexus. As his musical career began to take off, he put his law degree on hold, although he did return to finish law school in 2003.
  
  wn.com/Armin_van_Buuren
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  Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  Ayaan Hirsi Magan Ali ( pronunciation (help·info); Somali: Ayaan Xirsi Cali; Arabic: أيان حرسي علي‎ / ALA-LC: Ayān Ḥirsī ‘Alī; 13 November 1969) is a Somali-Dutch feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her views critical of Islam, practices of circumcision and female genital cutting. Her screenplay for Theo van Gogh's movie Submission led to death threats, resulting in the director's murder. The daughter of the Somali politician and opposition leader Hirsi Magan Isse, she is a founder of the women's rights organisation the AHA Foundation.
  When she was eight, Hirsi Ali's family left Somalia for Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the centre of a political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament, and led indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006.
  
  wn.com/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali
• Bart Bok
  Bart Jan Bok (Hoorn, 28 April 1906 – Tucson, 5 August 1983) was a Dutch-American astronomer.
  He was born in the Netherlands, but spent a good deal of his childhood days growing up in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies. He was educated at the Leiden and Groningen Universities. In 1929 he married fellow astronomer Dr. Priscilla Fairfield Bok, and for the remainder of their lives the two collaborated closely on their astronomical work. They had two children, Joyce and John.
  From 1929 until 1957 he worked at Harvard University. He then worked as director of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia for nine years, before returning to the United States as director of Steward Observatory. He became a US citizen in 1938.
  In 1975 Bok coauthored the statement Objections to Astrology (The Humanist, 1975), which was endorsed by 186 professional astronomers, astrophysicists, and other scientists, including nineteen winners of the Nobel Prize. The statement was published in The Humanist. This led to the formation of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, of which he was a founding Fellow.
  
  wn.com/Bart_Bok
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  Baruch Spinoza
  Baruch Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment^{[citation needed]} and modern biblical criticism, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes's mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important contributors. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely." Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all contemporary philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."
  Spinoza's name in different languages is Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה‎ Baruch Spinoza, Portuguese: Benedito or Bento de Espinosa and Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza; in all these languages, the given name means "the Blessed". Spinoza was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. The Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against him, effectively excluding him from Jewish society at age 23. His books were also later put on the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books.
  
  wn.com/Baruch_Spinoza
• Boudewijn Sirks
  Adriaan Johan Boudewijn Sirks (born 1947), known as Boudewijn Sirks and as A. J. B. Sirks, is a Dutch academic lawyer and papyrologist specializing in Roman law. He is currently Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford.
  Sirks was educated in law at the University of Leiden, then in theology and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, where he later graduated as a doctor of philosophy in law.
  Sirks's first academic position was as research assistant in philosophy at Amsterdam. However, in 1978 he was appointed as Lecturer in Legal History at the University of Utrecht, where he was later promoted Senior Lecturer in Legal Techniques. At the same time, he was writing a thesis for a doctoral degree in law at the University of Amsterdam. He returned to Amsterdam in 1989 as Reader and acting Professor of Legal Techniques.
  In 1997, Sirks became Professor of the History of Ancient Law, of the History of European Private Law, and of German Civil Law, at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main.
  
  wn.com/Boudewijn_Sirks
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  Bram van der Stok
  Bram van der Stok, MBE (30 October 1915 – 8 February 1993), also referred to as Bob van der Stok, was the most decorated aviator in Dutch history, as well as one of the three men to escape to freedom in "the Great Escape" from German POW camp Stalag Luft III.
  He spent his childhood between Sumatra, the Netherlands and the Dutch West Indies. After finishing his education at the Lyceum Alpinum in Switzerland he studied medicine at Leiden University where he became enamoured with rowing and ice hockey, and in 1936 he joined the Royal Netherlands Air Force where he flew a Fokker D.XXI, and continued his medical training at Utrecht University.
  When the Netherlands were attacked by German forces in 1940, Van der Stok scored the first victory when he shot down a Messerschmitt Bf 109 while on patrol over De Kooy airfield. After the Netherlands' capitulation, he made three unsuccessful attempts to escape to England, before finally reaching Scotland in June 1941, after escaping from Rotterdam as a stowaway on board of the Swiss merchant ship Saint Cerque, together with Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema and two others. He was awarded the Dutch Bronze Cross for his actions by Queen Wilhelmina and flew briefly in 91 Squadron before being transferred to 41 Squadron in February 1942 where he racked up another Bf 109 shot down and 3 'damaged' claims during March and April 1942.
  
  wn.com/Bram_van_der_Stok
• Carlo Beenakker
  Carlo W. J. Beenakker (born 1960) is a professor at Leiden University and leader of the university's mesoscopic physics group, established in 1992.
  Born in Leiden, he graduated there in 1982 and obtained his doctorate two years later. He then spent one year working in the USA as a fellow of the Niels Stensen Foundation before returning to the Netherlands as a member of the scientific staff of the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven. He was made External Professor of Theoretical Physics at Leiden in 1991.
  His work in mesoscopic physics addresses fundamental physical problems that occur when a macroscopic object is miniaturized.
  In 1993 he shared the Royal/Shell prize for "the discovery and explanation of quantum effects in the electrical conduction in mesoscopic systems". He was elected a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities in 2001, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. He was awarded one of the Netherlands' most prestigious science awards, the Spinozapremie, in 1999. In 2006 he was honored with the Akzo Nobel Science Award "for his pioneering work in the field of nanoscience".
  
  wn.com/Carlo_Beenakker
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  Carolus Clusius
  Charles de l'Écluse, L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius (Arras, February 19, 1526 – Leiden, April 4, 1609), seigneur de Watènes, was a Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists.
  He studied at Montpellier with the famous medical professor Guillaume Rondelet, though he never practiced medicine. In 1573 he was appointed prefect of the imperial medical garden in Vienna by Maximilian II and made Gentleman of the Imperial Chamber, but he was discharged from the imperial court shortly after the accession of Rudolf II in 1576. After leaving Vienna in the late 1580s he established himself in Frankfurt am Main, before his appointment as professor at the University of Leiden in October 1593. He helped create one of the earliest formal botanical gardens of Europe at Leyden, the Hortus Academicus, and his detailed planting lists have made it possible to recreate his garden near where it originally lay.
  In the history of gardening he is remembered not only for his scholarship but also for his observations on tulips "breaking" — a phenomenon discovered in the late 19th century to be due to a virus — causing the many different flamed and feathered varieties, which led to the speculative tulip mania of the 1630s. Clusius laid the foundations of Dutch tulip breeding and the bulb industry today.
  
  wn.com/Carolus_Clusius
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  Caspar Barlaeus
  Caspar Barlaeus (February 12, 1584 – January 14, 1648) was a Dutch polymath and Renaissance humanist, a theologian, poet, and historian.
  Born Caspar (Kaspar) van Baerle in Antwerp, Barlaeus' parents fled the city when it was occupied by Spanish troops shortly after his birth. They settled in Zaltbommel, where his father eventually would become head of the Latin school. Caspar studied theology and philosophy at the University of Leiden. After his study, he preached for 1.5 years in the village of Nieuwe-Tonge, before returning to Leiden in 1612 as an under-regent of a college. From 1617 he also was professor in philosophy at the university. Because of his remonstrant sympathies, he was forced out of this job in 1619. He then studied and graduated in medicines (in Caen), but never practiced professionally.
  From 1631, he was professor of philosophy and rhetoric at the Amsterdam Athenaeum, Athenaeum Illustre), which is commonly regarded as the predecessor of the University of Amsterdam; the Athenaeum had its seat in the fourteenth-century Agnietenkapel. In January 1632, Barlaeus, along with Gerard Vossius, held his inaugural speech at the Amsterdam Atheneum. Barlaeus later encouraged Martinus Hortensius to lecture –and give an inaugural speech- at the same institution.
  
  wn.com/Caspar_Barlaeus
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  Caspar Reuvens
  Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens (22 January 1793, The Hague – 26 July 1835, Rotterdam) was a Dutch historian and archaeologist. He was the founding director of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Dutch National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden, the world's first ever professor of archaeology (at Leiden University), and conducted the first excavations at the Roman provincial site Forum Hadriani in the Netherlands.
  In 1798, when Reuvens was only five years old, he lost his mother. His father was a prominent jurist, had been minister of justice for a short while, and filled various other important offices. Reuvens' father was transferred to Paris after the conquest by Napoleon, so the young Reuvens lived there for some years. In 1813 Reuvens graduated from the University of Paris with a degree in law. During the reign of Napoleon, Paris received art from all the conquered nations. It has been argued that this experience in Paris would prove an inspiration for Reuvens' later efforts to establish a Dutch national museum for archaeology.
  
  wn.com/Caspar_Reuvens
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  Christiaan Huygens
  Christiaan Huygens, FRS (/ˈhaɪɡənz/; [ˈɦœyɣə(n)s] ( listen); 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a prominent Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist. His work included early telescopic studies elucidating the nature of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan, the invention of the pendulum clock and other investigations in timekeeping, and studies of both optics and the centrifugal force.
  Huygens achieved note for his argument that light consists of waves, now known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle, which two centuries later became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality. He generally receives credit for his discovery of the centrifugal force, the laws for collision of bodies, for his role in the development of modern calculus and his original observations on sound perception (see repetition pitch).
  Christiaan Huygens was born in April 1629 at The Hague, the second son of Constantijn Huygens, (1596–1687), a friend of mathematician, philosopher and minor physicistRené Descartes, and of Suzanna van Baerle (deceased 1637), whom Constantijn had married on 6 April 1627. Christiaan studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange in Breda. After a stint as a diplomat, Huygens turned to science.
  
  wn.com/Christiaan_Huygens
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  Daniel Heinsius
  Daniel Heinsius (or Heins) (9 June 1580 – 25 February 1655) was one of the most famous scholars of the Dutch Renaissance.
  Heinsius was born in Ghent. The troubles of the Spanish war drove his parents to settle first at Veere in Zeeland, then to England, next at Ryswick and lastly at Flushing. In 1596, being already remarkable for his attainments, he was sent to the University of Franeker to study law under Henricus Schotanus. In 1598 he settled at Leiden for the nearly sixty remaining years of his life. There he studied under Joseph Scaliger, and there he met Marnix de St Aldegonde, Janus Dousa, Paulus Merula, Hugo Grotius and others; he was soon taken into the society of these celebrated men as their equal.
  His proficiency in the classical languages won the praise of all the best scholars of Europe, and offers were made to him, but in vain, to accept honourable positions outside Holland. He soon rose in dignity at the University of Leiden. In 1602 he started lecturing, in 1603 he was appointed professor of poetics, in 1605 professor of Greek, and at the death of Merula in 1607 he succeeded that illustrious scholar as the 4th librarian of Leiden University Library. As a classical scholar Heinsius edited many Latin and Greek classical as well as patristic authors, amongst others: Hesiod (1603), Theocritus, Bion and Moschus (1603), Aristotle’s Ars poetica (1610), Clement of Alexandria (1616) and Terentius (1618). He brought out the Epistles of Joseph Scaliger in 1627.
  
  wn.com/Daniel_Heinsius
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  David Ruhnken
  David Ruhnken (2 January 1723 – 14 May 1798) was a Dutch classical scholar of German origin.
  Ruhnken was born in Bedlin (today Bydlino) near Stolp, Pomerania Province, (today Słupsk, Poland). After he had attended Latin school at Königsberg (1737–1741), his parents wanted him to go in for the church, but after two years at the University of Wittenberg he determined to live the life of a scholar. At Wittenberg, Ruhnken lived in close intimacy with the two most distinguished professors, Heinrich Ritter and Berger. To them he owed a thorough grounding in ancient history and Roman antiquities and literature; and from them he learned a pure and vivid Latin style. At Wittenberg, Ruhnken also derived valuable mental training from studying mathematics and Roman law.
  The only thing that made him want to leave Wittenberg was a desire to explore Greek literature. Neither at Wittenberg nor at any other German university was Greek being seriously studied at the time. It was taught to students in divinity for the sake of the Greek New Testament and the early fathers of the church. Friedrich August Wolf was the real creator of Greek scholarship in modern Germany, and Richard Porson's gibe that "the Germans in Greek are sadly to seek" had some truth in it.
  
  wn.com/David_Ruhnken
• Dirk Jan Struik
  Dirk Jan Struik (September 30, 1894 – October 21, 2000) was a Dutch mathematician and Marxian theoretician who spent most of his life in the United States.
  Dirk Jan Struik was born in 1894 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as a teacher's son, Struik attended the Hogere Burgerschool (HBS) in The Hague. It was in this school that he was first introduced to left-wing politics by some of his teachers.
  In 1912 Struik entered University of Leiden, where he showed great interest in mathematics and physics, influenced by the eminent professors Paul Ehrenfest and Hendrik Lorentz.
  In 1917 he worked as a high school mathematics teacher for a while, after which he worked as a research assistant for J.A. Schouten. It was during this period that he developed his doctoral dissertation, "The Application of Tensor Methods to Riemannian Manifolds."
  In 1922 Struik obtained his doctorate in mathematics from University of Leiden. He was appointed to a teaching position at University of Utrecht in 1923. The same year he married Ruth Ramler, a Czech mathematician with a doctorate from the Charles University of Prague.
  
  wn.com/Dirk_Jan_Struik
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  Edsger W. Dijkstra
  Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (May 11, 1930 – August 6, 2002); Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɛtsxər ˈwibə ˈdɛɪkstra] ( listen)) was a Dutch computer scientist. He received the 1972 Turing Award for fundamental contributions to developing programming languages, and was the Schlumberger Centennial Chair of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin from 1984 until 2000.
  Shortly before his death in 2002, he received the ACM PODC Influential Paper Award in distributed computing for his work on self-stabilization of program computation. This annual award was renamed the Dijkstra Prize the following year, in his honor.
  Born in Rotterdam, Dijkstra studied theoretical physics at Leiden University, but quickly realized he was more interested in computer science. Originally employed by the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam, he held a professorship at the Eindhoven University of Technology, worked as a research fellow for Burroughs Corporation in the early 1980s, and later held the Schlumberger Centennial Chair in Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, in the United States. He retired in 2000.
  
  wn.com/Edsger_W._Dijkstra
• Egbert van Kampen
  Egbert Rudolf van Kampen (28 May 1908, Berchem, Belgium – 11 February 1942, Baltimore, Maryland) was a mathematician. He made important contributions to topology, especially to the study of fundamental groups.
  Van Kampen received his Ph.D. degree from Leiden University in 1929. His dissertation, entitled Die kombinatorische Topologie und die Dualitaetssaetze, was written under the direction of Willem van der Woude.
  In 1931 van Kampen left Europe and travelled to the United States to take up the position which he had been offered at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. There he met Oscar Zariski who had taught at Johns Hopkins University as a Johnston Scholar from 1927 until 1929 when he had joined the Faculty. Zariski had been working on the fundamental group of the complement of an algebraic curve, and he had found generators and relations for the fundamental group but was unable to show that he had found sufficient relations to give a presentation for the group. Van Kampen solved the problem, showing that Zariski's relations were sufficient, and the result is now known as the Zariski–van Kampen theorem. This led van Kampen to formulate and prove what is nowadays known as the Seifert–van Kampen theorem.
  
  wn.com/Egbert_van_Kampen
• Els Goulmy
  Els Goulmy (born 27 November 1946, The Hague) is professor of transplantation biology, especially regarding minor histocompatibility antigen, at Leiden University. She was awarded the Spinozapremie in 2002. She is the chair of the Dutch Network of Female Professors (Landelijk netwerk Vrouwelijke Hoogleraren).
  
  
  
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  Enrico Fermi
  Enrico Fermi (Italian pronunciation: [enˈriko ˈfermi]; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian-born, naturalized American physicist particularly known for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, and for his contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. He was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity.
  Fermi is widely regarded as one of the leading scientists of the 20th century, highly accomplished in both theory and experiment. Along with J. Robert Oppenheimer, he is frequently referred to as "the father of the atomic bomb". He also held several patents related to the use of nuclear power.
  Several awards, concepts, and institutions are named after Fermi, such as the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, a class of particles called fermions, the synthetic element fermium, and many more.
  
  wn.com/Enrico_Fermi
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  Eric Mazur
  Eric Mazur (b. November 14, 1954) is a prominent physicist and educator at Harvard University. Mazur is known for his work in experimental ultrafast optics and condensed matter physics and a national leader in science education. Born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Leiden University in the Netherlands.
  Mazur studied physics and astronomy at Leiden University. He passed his "doctoraal examen" (equivalent to a master's degree) in 1977 and continued his graduate studies at the same institution. In 1981 he obtained his Ph.D on a thesis entitled "The structure of non-equilibrium angular momentum polarizations in polyatomic gases". Although he intended to go on to a career in industry with Philips N.V. in Eindhoven, he left Europe at the urging of his father, Peter Mazur, to pursue a postdoctoral study with recent Nobel laureate Nicolaas Bloembergen at Harvard University.
  After two years as a postdoc, Mazur was offered a position of assistant professor at Harvard University. In 1987 he was promoted to associate professor and obtained tenure three years later in 1990. Mazur currently holds a chair as Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics jointly in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and in the Physics Department. He is also the Dean of Applied Physics.
  
  wn.com/Eric_Mazur
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  Ewine van Dishoeck
  Ewine van Dishoeck (born 13 June 1955, Leiden) is a Dutch astronomer and chemist. She is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at Leiden Observatory.
  She is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. She received the Spinozapremie in 2000, the Bourke Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) in 2001 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Dutch Chemical Society in 1994. She works on interstellar molecules; physical and chemical evolution during star formation and planet formation; submillimeter and mid-infrared astronomy; basic molecular processes; and the radiative transfer of line and continuum radiation.
  She was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows.
  Van Dishoeck is married to Tim de Zeeuw, also a professor of astronomy at Leiden University and, as of September 2007, Director General of the European Southern Observatory.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Ewine_van_Dishoeck
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  Franciscus Gomarus
  Franciscus Gomarus (François Gomaer) (January 30, 1563, Bruges – January 11, 1641, Groningen), was a Dutch theologian, a strict Calvinist and opponent of the teaching of Jacobus Arminius (and his followers), which was formally judged at the Synod of Dort (1618–1619).
  His parents, having embraced the principles of the Reformation, emigrated to the Palatinate in 1578, in order to enjoy freedom to profess their new faith, and they sent their son to be educated at Strasbourg under Johann Sturm. He remained there three years, and then went in 1580 to Neustadt, whither the professors of Heidelberg had been driven by the elector-palatine because they were not Lutherans. Here his teachers in theology were Zacharius Ursinus (1534–1583), Hieronymus Zanchius (1560–1590), and Daniel Tossanus (1541–1602). Crossing to England towards the end of 1582, he attended the lectures of John Rainolds (1549–1607) at Oxford, and those of William Whitaker at Cambridge. He graduated at Cambridge in 1584, and then went to Heidelberg, where the faculty had been by this time re-established. He was pastor of a Dutch Reformed Church in Frankfurt^{[disambiguation needed ]} from 1587 till 1593, when the congregation was dispersed by persecution. In 1594 he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Leiden, and before going there received from the University of Heidelberg the degree of doctor.
  
  wn.com/Franciscus_Gomarus
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  Franciscus Sylvius
  Franciscus Sylvius (11 May 1614, Hanau – 19 November 1672, Leiden), born Franz de le Boë, was a Dutch physician and scientist (chemist, physiologist and anatomist) who was an early champion of Descartes', Van Helmont's and William Harvey's work and theories. He was one of the earliest defenders of the circulation of the blood in the Netherlands.
  Sylvius, a Latinization of "de le Boë" translated as "of the woods", was born in Hanau, Germany to an affluent family originally from Cambrai, but worked and died in Netherlands. He studied medicine at the Protestant Academy of Sedan, and from 1632 - 1634 in Leiden under Adolph Vorstius and Otto Heurnius. In 1634 he held a disputation Positiones variae medicae under the presidency of Vorstius, in which he defended the proposition that there should be a pulmonary circulation. After that Sylvius made a study tour to Jena and Wittenberg, and on March 16, 1637 he defended a thesis entitled De animali motu ejusque laesionibus at the University of Basel under the presidency of Emmanuel Stupanus. After practicing medicine in his hometown Hanau he returned to Leiden in 1639 to lecture. In this period he became famous for his demonstrations on circulation. From 1641 on he had a lucrative medical practice in Amsterdam. While in Amsterdam he met Glauber, who introduced him to chemistry. In 1658 he was appointed the professor of medicine at the University of Leiden and was paid 1800 guilders which was twice the usual salary. He was the University's Vice-Chancellor in 1669-70.
  
  wn.com/Franciscus_Sylvius
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  Frederik Kortlandt
  Frederik Herman Henri (Frits) Kortlandt (June 19, 1946, Utrecht) is a professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is an expert on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in many other language families. He has also studied ways to associate language families into super-groups such as Indo-Uralic.
  Kortlandt, along with George van Driem and a few other colleagues, is one of the proponents of the Leiden School of linguistics, which describes language in terms of a meme or benign parasite.
  Kortlandt holds five degrees from the University of Amsterdam:
  Kortlandt is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and a Spinozapremie laureate. In 2007, he composed a version of Schleicher's fable, a story written in a hypothetical reconstruction Proto-Indo-European, which differs radically from all previous versions.
  
  wn.com/Frederik_Kortlandt
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  Frits Bolkestein
  Frederik "Frits" Bolkestein ( Frits Bolkestein (help·info)) (born 4 April 1933) is a retired Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). He served as a Member of the House of Representatives from 16 January 1978, until 5 November 1982, when he became State Secretary for Economic Affairs from 5 November 1982, until 14 July 1986, in the Cabinet Lubbers I. And again a Member of the House of Representatives from 3 June 1986, until 24 September 1988, when he became Minister of Defence from 24 September 1988, until 7 November 1989, in the Cabinet Lubbers II. He again returned to the House of Representatives on 14 September 1989, and nine months later on 1 May 1990, he became the Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives and the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy party leader. He served in this position for eight years until 30 July 1998.
  From 15 September 1999, until 22 November 2004, he was the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services. In the European Commission, Bolkestein was responsible for Internal Market, Taxation and Customs Union issues. Some of the more politically sensitive items in his portfolio were the draft Community Patent regulation and the draft Directives on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions and services in the internal market, the so-called "Bolkestein Directive", which has become the focus of heated debate.
  
  wn.com/Frits_Bolkestein
• Frits van Oostrom
  Frits van Oostrom (born, May 15, 1953), born in Utrecht, Netherlands, is University Professor for the Humanities at the Utrecht University. In 1999 he was a visiting Professor at Harvard for the Erasmus Chair. From September 2004 to June 2005, he was a fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS). He was awarded the Spinozapremie in 1995. In May, 2005 he became President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) for a three year period.
  In the later years Van Oostrom was given the task to assembly a Dutch Canon, meaning: what everyone should know of Holland and its history.
  
  
  
  
  
  wn.com/Frits_van_Oostrom
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  Gerard Schouw
  Adrianus Gerardus (Gerard) Schouw (born December 30, 1965 in Monster, South Holland) is a Dutch politician. As a member of Democrats 66 (D66) he has been an MP since June 17, 2010. He focuses on matters of the European Union, democracy, judiciary and the right of asylum.
  Schouw studied administration of business at Hogeschool Delft, public administration at VU University Amsterdam and obtained a Ph.D. in law from Leiden University.
  From 1990 to 1998 he was a member of the municipal council of Dordrecht and from 1994 to 1998 an alderman of Dordrecht. From 1999 to 2002 he was D66 chairman. From 2003 to 2010 he was a member of the Senate as well as from 2007 to 2010 Senate group leader. Since June 2011 he has been a member of the House of Representatives.
  Besides his political activities Schouw was director of the Dutch knowledge centre for big cities (Kenniscentrum Grote Steden) from 2001 to 2007. Since 2007 he has been president of the board of directors of the Netherlands Institute for City Innovation Studies (Nicis Institute).
  
  wn.com/Gerard_Schouw
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  Gerard Verschuuren
  Gerard M. (N.) Verschuuren (born 1946 in The Netherlands; nicknames Gerry and Geert) is a scientist, writer, speaker, and consultant, working at the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. He is a human geneticist who also earned a doctorate in the philosophy of science, and studied and worked at universities in Europe and the United States. In 1994, he moved permanently with his wife, Trudy, to the USA, and lives now in the southern part of the State of New Hampshire, USA.
  He began studying biology at Leiden University and specialized in human genetics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, with a thesis on the statistical analysis of epigenetic variation in the Tellem skulls of Mali in comparison with the Kurumba tribe of Burkina Faso (former Upper Volta) (1972). After that, he became a participant of the six-member Human Adaptability Project team (led by professor John Huizinga, M.D.) of the former Institute of Human Biology at Utrecht University Medical School, as part of the International Biological Program, studying the population genetics and adaptation of savannah populations in sub-saharan Africa based on research among the Fali in Cameroun, among the Dogon in Mali, and among the Fulbe in Chad.
  
  wn.com/Gerard_Verschuuren
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  Gisbertus Voetius
  Gisbertus Voetius (Latinized version of the Dutch name Gijsbert Voet) (3 March 1589 – 1 November 1676) was a Dutch Calvinist theologian.
  He was born at Heusden, Holland, studied at Leiden, and in 1611 became Protestant pastor of Vlijmen, whence in 1617 he returned to Heusden. In 1619 he played an influential part in the Synod of Dort, and in 1634 was made professor of theology and Oriental science at the University of Utrecht. Three years later he became pastor of the Utrecht congregation. He was an advocate of a strong form of Calvinism (Gomarism) against the Arminians. The city of Utrecht perpetuated his memory by giving his name to the street in which he had lived.
  In March 1642, while serving as rector of the University of Utrecht, Voetius persuaded the university's academic senate to issue a formal condemnation of the Cartesian philosophy and its local defender, Henricus Regius. According to the senate's statement, Cartesian philosophy was to be suppressed because:
  Descartes countered with a personal attack on Voetius, in a letter to Jacques Dinet, which he made public in the second edition (1642) of his Meditations. Voetius was provoked into getting Martin Schoock to produce a book-length assault on Descartes and his work, the Admiranda methodus (1643). Descartes associated the quarrel with the part Voetius was playing with another controversy with Samuel Maresius, who was at least sympathetic to some Cartesian ideas. Legal and diplomatic moves followed (the protagonists were in different provinces in the Netherlands); and Maresius at the University of Groningen was able to extract some admissions from Schoock that were quite damaging to Voetius.
  
  wn.com/Gisbertus_Voetius
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  Grotius
  Hugo Grotius (10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), also known as Huig de Groot, Hugo Grocio or Hugo de Groot, was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, theologian, Christian apologist, playwright, and poet.
  Grotius's influence on international law is paramount, and is acknowledged by, for instance, the American Society of International Law, which since 1999 holds an annual series of Grotius Lectures. Additionally, his contributions to Arminian theology provided the seeds for later Arminian-based movements, such as Methodism and Pentecostalism and he is acknowledged as a significant figure in the Arminianism-Calvinism debate.
  Born in Delft during the Dutch Revolt, Hugo was the first child of Jan de Groot and Alida van Overschie. His father was a man of learning, once having studied with the eminent Justus Lipsius at Leiden, as well as of political distinction, and he groomed his son from an early age in a traditional humanist and Aristotelian education. A prodigious learner, Hugo entered the University of Leiden when he was just eleven years old. There he studied with some of the most acclaimed intellectuals in northern Europe, including Franciscus Junius, Joseph Justus Scaliger, and Rudolph Snellius. At age sixteen he published his first book: a scholarly edition of the late antique author Martianus Capella's work on the seven liberal arts, Martiani Minei Felicis Capellæ Carthaginiensis viri proconsularis Satyricon, in quo De nuptiis Philologiæ & Mercurij libri duo, & De septem artibus liberalibus libri singulares. Omnes, & emendati, & Notis, siue Februis Hug. Grotii illustrati.
  
  wn.com/Grotius
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  Hans Ras
  Johannes Jacobus (Hans) Ras (1 April 1926 – 22 October 2003) was emeritus professor of Javanese language and literature at Leiden University, the Netherlands. In 1961 he was lecturer at the University of Malaya, and in 1969 first representative in Jakarta of the KITLV (the Leiden-based Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde = Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology). Until his retirement he was several times a member of the board of the KITLV. From 1985 to 1992, he was professor of Javanese language and literature at the University of Leiden.
  Hans Ras was born in 1926 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, as the third son of a family of four children. His father had a wholesale business in confectionery, and all the children had to help in the business. They were all supposed to go to junior high school for their secondary education, as was usual at the time. However, when the eldest was expelled from such a school for precociousness and sent to a higher-grade high school, the others followed in his footsteps.
  
  wn.com/Hans_Ras
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  Hendrik Casimir
  Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir FRS (July 15, 1909 in The Hague, Netherlands – May 4, 2000 in Heeze) was a Dutch physicist best known for his research on the two-fluid model of superconductors (together with C. J. Gorter) in 1934 and the Casimir effect (together with D. Polder) in 1948.
  He studied theoretical physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest, where he received his Ph.D. in 1931. His Ph.D. thesis dealt with the quantum mechanics of a rigid spinning body and the group theory of the rotations of molecules. During that time he also spent some time in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr. After receiving his Ph.D. he worked as an assistant to Wolfgang Pauli at Zürich. In 1938, he became a physics professor at Leiden University. At that time, he was actively studying both heat conduction and electrical conduction, and contributed to the attainment of millikelvin temperatures.
  In 1942, during World War II, Casimir moved to the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (Philips Physics Laboratory, NatLab) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He remained an active scientist and in 1945 wrote a well-known paper on Lars Onsager's principle of microscopic reversibility. He became a co-director of Philips NatLab in 1946 and a member of the board of directors of the company in 1956. He retired from Philips in 1972.
  
  wn.com/Hendrik_Casimir
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  Hendrik Lenstra
  Hendrik Willem Lenstra, Jr. (born 16 April 1949) is a Dutch mathematician.
  Lenstra received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 1977 and became a professor there in 1978. In 1987 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley; starting in 1998, he divided his time between Berkeley and the University of Leiden, until 2003, when he retired from Berkeley to take a full-time position at Leiden. He was awarded the Spinozapremie in 1998, and on 24 April 2009 he was made a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
  Lenstra has worked principally in computational number theory and is well-known as the discoverer of the elliptic curve factorization method and a co-discoverer of the Lenstra–Lenstra–Lovász lattice basis reduction algorithm.
  Three of his brothers, Arjen Lenstra, Andries Lenstra, and Jan Karel Lenstra, are also mathematicians. Jan Karel Lenstra is the present director of the Netherlands Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI). Hendrik Lenstra was the Chairman of the Program Committee of the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2010.
  
  wn.com/Hendrik_Lenstra
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  Henry Fielding
  Henry Fielding (Sharpham, 22 April 1707 – near Lisbon, 8 October 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones.
  Aside from his literary achievements, he has a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate. His younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer.
  Fielding married his first wife, Charlotte Craddock, in 1734. She died in 1744. In 1747 he married his wife's former maid, Mary Daniel. She was pregnant at the time of their marriage. Mary bore five children, three of whom died young.
  Fielding was educated at Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder. After a romantic episode with a young woman that ended in his getting into trouble with the law, he went to London where his literary career began. In 1728, he travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the University. However, due to lack of money, he was obliged to return to London and he began writing for the theatre, some of his work being savagely critical of the contemporary government under Sir Robert Walpole.
  
  wn.com/Henry_Fielding
• Henry G. Schermers
  Henricus Gerhard "Hein" Schermers (27 September 1928, Epe, Gelderland – 31 August 2006, Leiden) was a pioneering giant in three areas of law: International Institutional Law, the Law of the European Union and European Human Rights Law. He played a key role in developing these subjects through his writings. He was Professor of the Law of International Organisations at the University of Amsterdam, and then at the University of Leiden, where he had done his law studies.
  Amongst his notable books International Institutional Law and Judicial Remedies in the European Union are classics and have run into numerous editions. Schermers was a prolific writer of case-books and articles. Through his writing and teaching he influenced the development of his subjects.
  Schermers first was a Legal Advisor at The Netherlands Foreign Ministry, and there began his contacts with international organisations. The result was the book by which he made his first career, becoming an acknowledged expert in Public International Law with the publication of International Institutional Law.
  
  wn.com/Henry_G._Schermers
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  Herman Boerhaave
  Herman Boerhaave (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɦɛrmɑn ˌburˈɦaːvə], Voorhout, 31 December 1668 – Leiden, 23 September 1738) was a Dutch botanist, humanist and physician of European fame. He is regarded as the founder of clinical teaching and of the modern academic hospital. His main achievement was to demonstrate the relation of symptoms to lesions. In addition, he was the first to isolate the chemical urea from urine. His motto was Simplex sigillum veri; Simplicity is the sign of truth.
  From 1950 to 1970, Boerhaave's image was printed on Dutch 25-guilder banknotes. The Leiden University Medical Centre organises medical trainings called Boerhaave-courses.
  He was born at Voorhout near Leiden. Entering the University of Leiden he took his degree in philosophy in 1689, with a dissertation De distinctione mentis a corpore (on the difference of the mind from the body), in which he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Thomas Hobbes and Spinoza. He then turned to the study of medicine, in which he graduated in 1693 at Harderwijk in present-day Gelderland.
  
  wn.com/Herman_Boerhaave
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  Hugo Grotius
  Hugo Grotius (10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), also known as Huig de Groot, Hugo Grocio or Hugo de Groot, was a jurist in the Dutch Republic. With Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili he laid the foundations for international law, based on natural law. He was also a philosopher, theologian, Christian apologist, playwright, and poet.
  Grotius's influence on international law is paramount, and is acknowledged by, for instance, the American Society of International Law, which since 1999 holds an annual series of Grotius Lectures. Additionally, his contributions to Arminian theology provided the seeds for later Arminian-based movements, such as Methodism and Pentecostalism and he is acknowledged as a significant figure in the Arminianism-Calvinism debate.
  Born in Delft during the Dutch Revolt, Hugo was the first child of Jan de Groot and Alida van Overschie. His father was a man of learning, once having studied with the eminent Justus Lipsius at Leiden, as well as of political distinction, and he groomed his son from an early age in a traditional humanist and Aristotelian education. A prodigious learner, Hugo entered the University of Leiden when he was just eleven years old. There he studied with some of the most acclaimed intellectuals in northern Europe, including Franciscus Junius, Joseph Justus Scaliger, and Rudolph Snellius. At age sixteen he published his first book: a scholarly edition of the late antique author Martianus Capella's work on the seven liberal arts, Martiani Minei Felicis Capellæ Carthaginiensis viri proconsularis Satyricon, in quo De nuptiis Philologiæ & Mercurij libri duo, & De septem artibus liberalibus libri singulares. Omnes, & emendati, & Notis, siue Februis Hug. Grotii illustrati.
  
  wn.com/Hugo_Grotius
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  Ian Buruma
  Ian Buruma (born December 28, 1951) is a British-Dutch writer and academic. Much of his work focuses on the culture of Asia, particularly that of 20th-century Japan.
  He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands, to a Dutch father and British mother. He studied Chinese literature at Leiden University, and then Japanese film at Nihon University in Tokyo. He has held a number of editorial and academic positions, and has contributed numerous articles to The New York Review of Books. He has been noted as a "well-regarded European intellectual."
  In 2000 he delivered the Huizinga Lecture – Neoromanticism of writers in exile – in the Pieterskerk in Leiden, The Netherlands. He has held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C and St Antony's College, Oxford. In 2003 he became Luce Professor of Democracy, Human Rights & Journalism at Bard College, New York.
  Since 2005 he has resided in New York, USA.
  In 2008 Buruma was awarded the Erasmus Prize, which is awarded to an individual who has made "an especially important contribution to culture, society or social science in Europe."
  
  wn.com/Ian_Buruma
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  Igor Tamm
  Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm (Russian И́горь Евге́ньевич Тамм; 8 July 1895 – 12 April 1971) was a Soviet physicist who received the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, for their 1934 discovery of Cherenkov radiation.
  According to Russian sources, Tamm was born in Vladivostok, Russian Empire (now Russia) into a noble family of German extraction. His grandfather Theodor Tamm emigrated from Thuringia), and other sources describe him as Jewish. He studied at a gymnasium in Elisavetgrad (now Kirovohrad, Ukraine). In 1913-1914 he studied at the University of Edinburgh together with his school-friend Boris Hessen.
  At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he joined the army as a volunteer field medic. In 1917 he joined the Revolutionary movement and became an active anti-War campaigner, serving on revolutionary committies after the March Revolution. He returned to the Moscow State University from which he graduated in 1918.
  Tamm married Nataliya Shuyskaya in September of 1917. She belonged to an old princely family of Rurikid descent . Their daughter Irina eventually became a noted chemist.
  
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  Ivo Opstelten
  Ivo Willem Opstelten (born January 31, 1944) is a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). He is the Minister of Security and Justice in the Cabinet Rutte since October 14, 2010.
  He has served as Mayor of seven different Municipalities. Most recently as Acting Mayor of Tilburg from November 4, 2009 until July 16, 2010. He was Mayor of Utrecht from November 1, 1992 until February 16, 1999 when he became Mayor of Rotterdam which he served for nearly ten years until January 1, 2009. He was the Party Chair of People's Party for Freedom and Democracy between March 31, 2008 and October 14, 2010.
  He studied law at Leiden University, where he specialised in constitutional and public law. He graduated end 1969 and worked from 1970 to 1972 at the municipality of Vlaardingen, before starting a long-term career as Mayor.
  In 1972 he began as Mayor of Dalen, at the age of 28 the youngest Mayor of the Netherlands. In 1977 he became Mayor of Doorn. In 1980 he became the Mayor of Delfzijl, in 1983 he became Acting Mayor of Beerta because of the pregnancy of Mayor Hanneke Jagersma, a position he held for four months. In 1992 he made the switch to the fourth largest Municipality of the Netherlands Utrecht. In 1999 he was nominated as Mayor of Rotterdam the second city of the Netherlands. In 2002 he was praised for his handling of the aftermath of the assassination of politician Pim Fortuyn. He served as Mayor of Rotterdam for ten years. He resigned on January 1, 2009. He was succeeded by Ahmed Aboutaleb. On March 31, 2008 he was elected as the new Party Chair of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy. On November 6, 2009 it was announced by Wim van de Donk, the Queen's Commissioner of North Brabant, that Opstelten had accepted the position as Acting Mayor of Tilburg after Mayor Ruud Vreeman's resignation was sought by the City council of Tilburg.
  
  wn.com/Ivo_Opstelten
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  Jacobus Arminius
  Jacobus Arminius (October 10, 1560 – October 19, 1609), the Latinized name of the Dutch theologian Jakob Hermanszoon from the Protestant Reformation period, served from 1603 as professor in theology at the University of Leiden. He wrote many books and treatises on theology, and his views became the basis of Arminianism and the Dutch Remonstrant movement.
  Following his death, his challenge to the Reformed standard, the Belgic Confession, provoked ample discussion at the Synod of Dort, which crafted the five points of Calvinism in response to Arminius's teaching.
  Arminius, born at Oudewater, Utrecht, became an orphan while still young. His father Herman (the name Arminius/Armin represents a Latinized form of Hermanszoon, "Herman's son") died, leaving his wife a widow with small children. His mother was killed during the Spanish massacre at Oudewater in 1575.
  The pastor, Theodorus Aemilius, adopted Jacobus and sent him to school at Utrecht; but he died in 1574. Subsequently Rudolph Snellius brought him to Marburg, and enabled Arminius to study theology at the University of Leiden.
  
  wn.com/Jacobus_Arminius
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  Jacobus Gronovius
  Jacobus Gronovius a.k.a. Jacob Gronow (10 October 1645, Deventer – 21 October 1716, Leiden) was a Dutch classical scholar.
  He was the son of the German classical scholar Johann Friedrich Gronovius and Aleyda ten Nuyl from Deventer, and father of the botanist Jan Frederik Gronovius. His family moved to Leiden in 1658 and he married Anna van Vredenburch from Rotterdam on 5 May 1680 [1].
  Gronovius is chiefly known as the editor of the Thesaurus antiquitatum Graecarum (1697-1702, in 13 volumes).
  
  wn.com/Jacobus_Gronovius
• Jan Hamer
  Jan Hamer (May 2, 1927 – July 25, 2008) was an organic chemistry professor at Tulane University in New Orleans from 1960 to 1992. A Dutch citizen, Hamer received his Ph.D. from the University of Leiden in The Netherlands. He authored three chemistry books and was listed in Who's Who in the South and Southwest. He was a member of the Round Table Club and the Holland Club, both in New Orleans. He had a deep interest in classical music, history, horticulture, and cooking.
  Hamer was born to Gerard Pieter Hamer and Wijke Hamer-de Boer in Gombong, Indonesia. He moved with his family to The Hague in The Netherlands. He returned to Indonesia in 1952 and served for three years as a second lieutenant and commander of a foot battalion for the Royal Netherlands military. On March 20, 1956, Hamer married the former Millicent May (born April 10, 1926) of New Orleans.
  Hamer died in a hospice in Baton Rouge. Services were held on July 30 at the Audubon Park Golf Clubhouse in New Orleans. In addition to his wife, Hamer was survived by two daughters, Elizabeth May Hamer Pope and husband, Joseph Keith Pope of Baton Rouge, and Hilary Halsey Hamer Tafran and husband, Mohammad Hassan Musaid Tafran, of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; a grandson, Rayan Mohammad Hassan Tafran, of Jeddah, and a sister, Meinie, of the Netherlands.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Hamer
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  Jan Six
  Jan Six (January 14, 1618, Amsterdam – May 28, 1700, Amsterdam) was an important cultural figure in the Dutch Golden Age.
  The son of a well-to-do merchant family Six, Jan studied liberal arts and law in Leiden in 1634. He became the son-in-law of the mayor of Amsterdam, Nicolaes Tulp, in 1655, when he married Tulp's daughter Margaretha. Thanks to his father-in-law, he became magistrate of family law and various other appointments on the city council, eventually becoming mayor of Amsterdam himself in 1691 at the ripe age of 73.
  Six was good friends with the poet Joost van den Vondel and the painter Rembrandt van Rijn, during the forties. Six remained a devotee of the arts all his life and wrote plays himself, the most famous being Medea, published in 1648 (with an etching by Rembrandt), and Onschult (Innocence) in 1662. In the same year the Dutch translation of Baldassarre Castiglione's Il libro del Cortegiano was devoted to Six.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Six
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  Jan Steen
  Jan Havickszoon Steen (c. 1626 – buried February 3, 1679) was a Dutch genre painter of the 17th century (also known as the Dutch Golden Age). Psychological insight, sense of humour and abundance of colour are marks of his trade.
  Steen was born in Leiden, where his well-to-do, Catholic family were brewers and ran the tavern The Red Halbert for two generations. Like his even more famous contemporary Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen attended the Latin school and became a student in Leiden. He received his painterly education from Nicolaes Knupfer (1603–1660), a German painter of historical and figurative scenes in Utrecht. Influences of Knupfer can be found in Steen's use of composition and colour. Another source of inspiration were Adriaen van Ostade and Isaac van Ostade, painters of rural scenes, who lived in Haarlem. Whether Steen actually studied with Ostade is not known.
  In 1648 Jan Steen and Gabriel Metsu founded the painters' Guild of Saint Luke at Leiden. Soon after he became an assistant to the renowned landscape painter Jan van Goyen and moved into his house on the Bierkade in The Hague. On Oct 3, 1649 he married van Goyen's daughter Margriet, with whom he would have eight children. Steen worked with his father-in-law until 1654, when he moved to Delft, where he ran brewery De Roscam (The Curry Comb) (or De Slang (The Snake)) without much success. After the explosion in Delft in 1654 the art market was depressed, but Steen painted his famous A Burgomaster of Delft and his daughter. It does not seem to be clear if this painting should be called a portrait or a genre work.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Steen
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  Jan Tinbergen
  Jan Tinbergen (April 12, 1903 – June 9, 1994), was a Dutch economist. He was awarded the first Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. Tinbergen was a founding trustee of Economists for Peace and Security.
  Jan Tinbergen was the eldest of five children of Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen and Jeannette van Eek. His brother Niko would also win a Nobel Prize (for physiology, during 1973) for his work in ethology, while his youngest brother Luuk would become a famous ornithologist. Tinbergen studied mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden under Paul Ehrenfest. During 1929 he earned his PhD degree at this university with his thesis entitled "Minimumproblemen in de natuurkunde en de economie" (Minimisation problems in Physics and Economics). From 1929 till 1945 he worked, in addition to his professorship at Erasmus University Rotterdam, for the Dutch statistical office. He was also consultant to the League of Nations. From 1945 till 1955 he served as the first director of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. Jan Tinbergen was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science and of the International Academy of Science. During 1956 he founded the Econometric Institute at the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam together with Henri Theil, who also was his successor in Rotterdam. The Tinbergen Institute was named in his honour. The International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) awarded its Honorary Fellowship to Jan Tinbergen in 1962.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Tinbergen
• Jan Zaanen
  Jan Zaanen (born 17 April 1957, Leiden) is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He is best known for his contributions to the understanding of the quantum physics of the electrons in strongly correlated material, and in particular High temperature superconductivity. He introduced the Zaanen-Sawatzky-Allen diagram, the LDA+U band structure method and he became particular well known for his discovery of the stripe instability of the doped Mott insulator. His present research is focussed on the Quantum Critical Point and unconventional phases of quantum matter. He is also well known for his many editorial contributions to Nature and Science. He is at present on the board of reviewing editors of the latter journal.
  In 2004-2005 he spent a year at Stanford University sponsored by the Fulbright Program and in 2006 he received the Spinozapremie, the "Dutch Nobel prize", for his scientific accomplishments.
  Over this past year, Zaanen and his colleagues Cubrovic and Schalm, applied String theory for the first time to explain a physical phenomen.
  
  wn.com/Jan_Zaanen
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  Janus Dousa
  Janus Dousa [Jan van der Does] lord of Noordwyck (6 December 1545 – 8 October 1604), Dutch statesman, historian, poet and philologist, the first Librarian of Leiden University Library and the defender of Leiden,
  He was born at Noordwijk, in the province of Holland. Dousa's parents, Johan van der Does, lord of Noordwijk, and Anna van Nijenrode died when their son was only five years old. Dousa was placed under the guardianship of his grandfather Frans van Nijenrode until his death in 1560 and later of his uncle Werner van der Does, lord of Kattendijke. He began his studies at Lier in Brabant, became a pupil of Henry Junius at Delft in 1560, and then passed on in succession to Louvain, Douai and Paris. Here he studied Greek under Jean Dorat, professor at the College Royal, and became acquainted with the chancellor L'Hopital, Adrianus Turnebus, Pierre de Ronsard and other eminent men. On his return in 1565 he married Elizabeth van Zuylen.
  
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  Johan de Witt
  Johan de Witt, heer van Zuid- en Noord-Linschoten, Snelrewaard, Hekendorp and IJsselveere (24 September 1625 – 20 August 1672) was a key figure in Dutch politics in the mid 17th century, when its flourishing sea trade in a period of globalization made the United Provinces a leading European power during the Dutch Golden Age. De Witt controlled the Netherlands political system from around 1650 until shortly before his spectacular death in 1672 working with various factions from nearly all the major cities, especially his hometown, Dordrecht, and the city of birth of his wife, Amsterdam.
  Johan de Witt was a member of the old Dutch patrician family De Witt. His father was Jacob de Witt, an influential regent and burgher from the patrician class in the city of Dordrecht, which in the seventeenth century, was one of the most important cities of the dominating province of Holland. Johan and his older brother, Cornelis de Witt, grew up in a privileged social environment in terms of education, his father having as good acquaintances important scholars and scientists, such as Isaac Beeckman, Jacob Cats, Gerhard Vossius and Andreas Colvius. Johan and Cornelis both attended the Latin school in Dordrecht, which imbued both brothers with the values of the Roman Republic.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Johan_de_Witt
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  Johan Huizinga
  Johan Huizinga (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjoːɦɑn ˈɦœyzɪŋɣaː]) (Groningen, December 7, 1872 – De Steeg, February 1, 1945), was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
  Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his degree in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, gaining a good command of Sanskrit. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.
  It was not until 1902 that his interest turned towards medieval and Renaissance history. He continued teaching as an Orientalist until he became a Professor of General and Dutch History at Groningen University in 1905. In 1915, he was made Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942. That year, he spoke critically of his country's German occupiers, comments that were consistent with his writings about Fascism in the 1930s. From then until his death in 1945, he was held in detention by the Nazis. He died in De Steeg in Gelderland, near Arnhem, just a few weeks before Nazi rule ended, and he lies buried in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.
  
  wn.com/Johan_Huizinga
• Johann Bartsch
  Johann Bartsch (1709, Königsberg – 1738, Suriname) was a German physician, who graduated in the Netherlands at Leiden University in 1737. His Thesis de Calore Corporis Humani hygraulico is the only work he published. He was much attached to the science of botany, which led him to seek the society of Carl Linnaeus, who was on a year-long visit to Boerhaave at Leiden. No fewer than 47 letters of Bartsch to Linnaeus from 1736 and 1737 survive, and Bartsch assisted Linnaeus with the publication of Flora Lapponica [1]. By the solicitation of Linnaeus, who had to decline the offer himself, Bartsch was sent by Boerhaave to Suriname, where, in six months after his arrival, he fell victim to the insalubrity of the climate. Linnaeus has perpetuated his name by denominating a genus of plants (Bartsia) after him.
  
  
  
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• Johannes Alberti
  Johannes Alberti, born in Assen on 6 March 1698, was the son of a corn miller; because of the distance between his parental house and the school, he could hardly visit the latter. It also appears as if his parents have at first neglected the education of their child. Luckily the miller's apprentice, Jan Mulder, found some pleasure in teaching the boy to read. The pupil made good progress, and soon the teacher took his student with him to the church. To his amazement, he noticed that the boy kept his eye steady on the pulpit. When after his return home, his mother asked him if he had remembered anything that was said, he stood upon a wooden crate in the living room, read the text of the preach, and declamated parts of it with such simplicity that his mother had tears in her eyes. From this moment on, the parents had the hope that their child could aim for something higher than the work of his parents. And he didn't disappoint them: after having outclassed his fellow students at the Latin school, he was sent to the University of Franeker in 1718, where he was immersed in Antiquity by Lambertus Bos and Campegius Vitringa. The latter also gave him a thorough knowledge of theology, so that, when he had finished his studies in Franeker after six years, he was known as someone of excellent capacities, promising a lot for science and homeland.
  
  wn.com/Johannes_Alberti
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  Johannes Hudde
  Johannes (van Waveren) Hudde (23 April 1628, Amsterdam – 15 April 1704, Amsterdam) was a burgomaster (mayor) of Amsterdam between 1672 – 1703, a mathematician and governor of the Dutch East India Company.
  As a "burgemeester" of Amsterdam he ordered that the city canals should be flushed at high tide and that the polluted water of the town "secreten" should be diverted to pits outside the town instead of into the canals. He also promoted hygiene in and around the town's water supply.
  "Huddes stones" were marker stones that were used to mark the summer high water level at several points in the city. They later were the foundation for the "NAP", the now Europe-wide system for measuring water levels.
  Johannes Hudde studied law in Leiden, but turned to maths under the influence of his teacher Frans van Schooten. From 1654 to 1663 he worked under van Schooten and with his fellow students Johan de Witt and Hendrik van Heuraet they translated Descartes's La Géométrie into Latin. Each of the students added to the work. Hudde's contribution consisted of a study on maxima and minima and a theory of equations.
  
  wn.com/Johannes_Hudde
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  John Quincy Adams
  John Quincy Adams ⁱ/ˈkwɪnzi/ (July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was the sixth President of the United States (1825–1829). He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former President John Adams and Abigail Adams. As a diplomat, Adams played an important role in negotiating many international treaties, most notably the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. As Secretary of State, he negotiated with the United Kingdom over America's northern border with Canada, negotiated with Spain the annexation of Florida, and authored the Monroe Doctrine. Historians agree he was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history.
  As president, he sought to modernize the American economy and promoted education. Adams enacted a part of his agenda and paid off much of the national debt. He was stymied by a Congress controlled by his enemies, and his lack of patronage networks helped politicians eager to undercut him. He lost his 1828 bid for re-election to Andrew Jackson. In doing so, he became the first President since his father to serve a single term.
  
  wn.com/John_Quincy_Adams
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  Joseph Luns
  Joseph Marie Antoine Hubert Luns (August 28, 1911 – July 17, 2002) was a Dutch politician and diplomat of the defunct Catholic People's Party (KVP) now merged into the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). He was the longest-serving Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs from September 2, 1952 until July 6, 1971 and later became the 5th (and also longest-serving) Secretary General of NATO for 13 years from October 1, 1971 until June 25, 1984.
  Joseph Luns was born in a Roman Catholic, francophile and artistic family. His mother’s family originated from Alsace-Lorraine and had moved to Belgium after the annexation of the region by the German Reich in 1871. His father Huib Luns was a versatile artist and a gifted educationalist, who ended his career as professor of architectural drawing at the Technical University of Delft. Luns got his secondary education in Amsterdam and Brussels. He opted to become a commissioned officer of the Dutch Royal Navy, but registered too late to be selected. Therefore, Luns decided to study law at Amsterdam University during the period 1932-1937. Like his father, Luns demonstrated a preference for conservative and authoritarian political parties and an interest in international politics. As a young student he positioned himself on the political right, favoring a strong authority for the state and being of the opinion that socialism, due to its idealistic ideology, had fostered the rising of fascism and nazism. Luns himself had been a silent member of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), but left in 1936 before this party chose a strongly anti-semitic course.
  
  wn.com/Joseph_Luns
• Jouke de Vries
  Jouke de Vries (born 26 September 1960, Dearsum) is a professor at Leiden University in Leiden.
  De Vries grew up in the village of Balk in Friesland and in 1979 started his studies in political science at the University of Amsterdam. He has been working at the group Leaderships Art at the University of Leiden since 1984. De Vries obtained his PhD in 1989 from H. Daudt and H. Daalder on the article he wrote on "Ground Politics" (later made into a novel by the same name) and the educational essay "Cabinet Crisis in the Netherlands".
  In 2002 he was a candidate for the leadership of the Partij van de Arbeid, but got only two percent of the votes of the party members against sixty percent for the chosen leader Wouter Bos. He teaches students at Leiden University in his role as a Professor of political science (Dutch:Hoogleraar). He regularly speaks to international groups of students, especially exchange students. He is currently a columnist for a Dutch language website, where he writes his own blog each week. Here he writes on recent news from the worlds of politics and economics.
  
  wn.com/Jouke_de_Vries
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  Kamerlingh Onnes
  Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (21 September 1853 – 21 February 1926) was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He pioneered refrigeration techniques, and he explored how materials behaved when cooled to nearly absolute zero. He was the first to liquify helium. His production of extreme cryogenic temperatures led to his discovery of superconductivity in 1911: for certain materials, electrical resistance abruptly vanishes at very low temperatures.
  Kamerlingh Onnes was born in Groningen, Netherlands. His father, Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, was a brickworks owner. His mother was Anna Gerdina Coers of Arnhem.
  In 1870, Kamerlingh Onnes attended the University of Groningen. He studied under Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff at the University of Heidelberg from 1871 to 1873. Again at Groningen, he obtained his masters in 1878 and a doctorate in 1879. His thesis was "Nieuwe bewijzen voor de aswenteling der aarde" (tr. New proofs of the rotation of the earth). From 1878 to 1882 he was assistant to Johannes Bosscha, the director of the TU Delft (then Delft Polytechnic), for whom he substituted as lecturer in 1881 and 1882.
  
  wn.com/Kamerlingh_Onnes
• Kune Biezeveld
  Kunegonda Elizabeth (Kune) Biezeveld (April 13, 1948, The Hague – September 7, 2008, Hilversum) was a Dutch theologian. She was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church (since 2004 the Protestant Church in the Netherlands).
  Biezeveld studied theology at Leiden University. Afterwards she was a minister in Zandvoort, Voorthuizen and in a hospital in Blaricum.
  She took her Doctor of Theology in 1996. In the same year she became a lecturer dogmatics and Biblical theology at Leiden University. She became a personal professor in women's studies theology at the same university in 2002.
  Biezeveld was especially interested in feminist theology. She had moderate views of this brand of theology and was in favour of a connection with classical theology.
  Kune Biezeveld died at the age of sixty due to pancreatic cancer.
  
  wn.com/Kune_Biezeveld
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  Lemuel Gulliver
  Lemuel Gulliver is the protagonist and narrator of Gulliver's Travels, a novel written by Jonathan Swift, first published in 1726.
  According to Swift's novel, Gulliver was born in Nottinghamshire c. 1661, where his father had a small estate; the Gulliver family is said to have originated in Oxfordshire, however. He studied for three years (c. 1675-1678) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, leaving to become an apprentice to an eminent London surgeon; after four years (c. 1678-1682), he left to study at the University of Leiden, a prominent French medical school. He also educated himself in navigation and mathematics, leaving the University around 1685.
  Prior to the voyages whose adventures are recounted in the novel, he travelled less remarkably to the Levant (c. 1685-1688), and later to the East Indies and West Indies (c. 1690-1696). Between his travels he married Miss Mary Burton (c. 1688), daughter of a London hosier. In his education and travels he acquired some knowledge of "High and Low Dutch, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, and Lingua Franca"; he later states that he "understood (Portuguese) very well".
  
  wn.com/Lemuel_Gulliver
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  Ludolph van Ceulen
  Ludolph van Ceulen (28 January 1540 – 31 December 1610) was a German / Dutch mathematician from Hildesheim. He emigrated to the Netherlands.
  Ceulen moved to Delft to teach fencing and mathematics. In 1594 he opened a fencing school in Leiden. In 1600 he was appointed the first professor of mathematics at Leiden University. He died in Leiden.
  Ludolph van Ceulen spent a major part of his life calculating the numerical value of the mathematical constant π, using essentially the same methods as those employed by Archimedes some seventeen hundred years earlier. He published a 20-decimal value in his 1596 book Van den Circkel ("On the Circle"), later expanding this to 35 decimals. After his death, the "Ludolphine number",
  was engraved on his tombstone in Leiden. The tombstone was later lost but was restored in 2000.
  
  wn.com/Ludolph_van_Ceulen
• Maarten Jansen
  Prof. Dr. Maarten Evert Reinoud Gerard Nicolaas Jansen (born 4 October, 1952, Zeist) is a Dutch academic and professor of Mesoamerican archaeology and history. As of 2007 Jansen holds the position of Dean of the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University, Netherlands. Jansen is an internationally renowned figure in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies, whose particular field of expertise concerns the culture, history and manuscripts of the Mixtec civilization from the Oaxacan region of central-southern Mexico.
  
  
  
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  Mark Rutte
  Mark Rutte (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmɑrk ˈrʏtə]; born 14 February 1967) is a Dutch politician of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). He has been the Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Minister of General Affairs since 14 October, 2010 as head of the cabinet.
  He previously served as State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment from 22 July 2002 to 17 June 2004 in the Cabinets Balkenende I and II. Subsequently he was State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science from 17 June 2004 until his resignation on 27 June 2006, when he was elected to succeed Jozias van Aartsen as the new VVD party leader.
  At the 2006 general election the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy under Rutte lost six seats and he became opposition leader, serving during the Cabinet Balkenende IV. After the fall of the Cabinet Balkenende IV, a snap election was called, and Rutte was once again the VVD's lijsttrekker (top party list candidate) for the 2010 general election. The VVD won the highest number of votes cast, resulting in their occupying 31 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives. After a long formation period, Rutte became prime minister and formed a cabinet. When he was sworn in on 14 October 2010, he became the first liberal Prime Minister in the Netherlands in 92 years. He resigned on 23 April 2012 after his government fell due to an impasse in talks on an austerity budget.
  
  wn.com/Mark_Rutte
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  Max van der Stoel
  Max van der Stoel, KCMG (3 August 1924 – 23 April 2011) was a Dutch politician and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. He served as the first High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
  On 17 May 1991, he was granted the honorary title of Minister of State.
  Van der Stoel studied law at Leiden University where he obtained an LL.M. degree. From 1953 to 1958 he worked for the Wiardi Beckman Stichting, the scientific bureau of the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA, the Dutch labour party) and became international secretary for the PvdA in 1963. From 1973 to 1977 and 1981 to 1982 he was the Netherlands Minister of Foreign Affairs.
  He was appointed as the first High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in December 1992 and took up his functions in January 1993. He remained in office until 2000. Max van der Stoel is a member of the Bilderberg Group.
  In 2001, following his intervention as High Commissioner in the ongoing problem of equitable access to higher education by members of he Albanian ethnic group in the Republic of Macedonia, he became the founding President of the International Foundation for the South East European University, raising some 35m Euros from the international community. He later served as President of the University Board until 2004. He was awarded the University's first honorary Doctorate and the University named its Library in his honour.
  
  wn.com/Max_van_der_Stoel
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  Maxime Verhagen
  Maxime Jacques Marcel Verhagen (born September 14, 1956) is a Dutch politician in the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). He is the Minister of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation and Deputy Prime Minister since October 14, 2010 in the Cabinet Rutte.
  He previously served as a Member of the European Parliament for the Netherlands from July 25, 1989 until July 19, 1994 representing the European People's Party. And a Member of the House of Representatives from May 17, 1994 until February 22, 2007. When CDA Party leader and Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives Jan Peter Balkenende became Prime Minister Verhagen succeed him as the Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives during the Cabinets Balkenende I, II en III, during that time he became the unofficial Deputy leader of the CDA. He became the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Cabinet Balkenende IV serving from February 22, 2007 until October 14, 2010, he also served as Minister for Development Cooperation following the resignation from Bert Koenders. After the Dutch general election of 2010 CDA Party leader Jan Peter Balkenende resigned and Verhagen became the new Parliamentary leader in the House of Representatives. After the 2010 Dutch cabinet formation Verhagen and People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) Party leader Mark Rutte made a coalition agreement with the Party for Freedom (PVV) of Party for Freedom. Verhagen became Minister of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation and Deputy Prime Minister in the new cabinet.
  
  wn.com/Maxime_Verhagen
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  Michiel Jan de Goeje
  Michael Jan de Goeje (August 13, 1836 – May 17, 1909) was a Dutch orientalist.
  Michael Jan de Goeje was born in Dronrijp, Friesland. He devoted himself at an early age to the study of oriental languages and became especially proficient in Arabic, under the guidance of Reinhart Dozy and Theodor Juynboll, to whom he was afterwards an intimate friend and colleague. He took his degree of doctor at Leiden in 1860, and then studied for a year in Oxford, where he examined and collated the Bodleian manuscripts of al-Idrisi (part being published in 1866, in collaboration with Dozy, as Description de l'Afrique et de l'Espagne). About the same time he wrote Mémoires de l'histoire et de la géographie orientales, and edited Expugnatio regionum. In 1883, on the death of Dozy, he became Arabic professor at Leiden, retiring in 1906.
  Though perhaps not a teacher of the first order, he wielded great influence during his long tenure of the chair not only over his pupils, but over theologians and eastern administrators who attended his lectures. His many editions of Arabic texts are of the highest value to scholars; the most important being his great edition of Tabari. Though highly averse to politics, he took a keen interest in the municipal affairs of Leiden and made a special study of elementary education. He took the leading part in the International Congress of Orientalists at Algiers in 1905. He was a member of the Institut de France, was awarded the German Order of Merit, and received an honorary doctorate of Cambridge University. At his death he was president of the newly formed International Association of Academies of Science.
  
  wn.com/Michiel_Jan_de_Goeje
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  Mohammad Hatta
   Mohammad Hatta (help·info) (12 August 1902 – 14 March 1980) was born in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He was Indonesia's first vice president, later also serving as the country's Prime Minister. Known as "The Proclamator", he and a number of Indonesians, including the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, fought for the independence of Indonesia from the Dutch. Despite his efforts to gain Indonesian independence, he studied in the Netherlands from 1921 until 1932. Moreover, after his early education, he studied in Dutch schools in Indonesia.
  Mohammad Hatta is often remembered as Bung Hatta ('Bung' is an affectionate title used to address colleagues, popular in the early 1900s and is still used by Indonesians).
  Hatta was born in Bukittinggi on 12 August 1902 into a prominent and strongly Islamic family. His grandfather was a respected ulema in Batuhampar, near Payakumbuh. His father, Haji Mohammad Djamil, died when he was eight months old and he was left with his six sisters and his mother. As in the matrilineal society of Minangkabau tradition, he was then raised in his mother's family. His mother's family was wealthy, and Hatta was able to study Dutch as well as finishing Qur'an after school.
  
  wn.com/Mohammad_Hatta
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  Myles Standish
  Myles Standish (c. 1584 – October 3, 1656; sometimes spelled Miles Standish) was an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military advisor for Plymouth Colony. One of the Mayflower passengers, Standish played a leading role in the administration and defense of Plymouth Colony from its inception. On February 17, 1621, the Plymouth Colony militia elected him as its first commander and continued to re-elect him to that position for the remainder of his life. Standish served as an agent of Plymouth Colony in England, as assistant governor, and as treasurer of Plymouth Colony. He was also one of the first settlers and founders of the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts.
  A defining characteristic of Standish's military leadership was his proclivity for preemptive action which resulted in at least two attacks (or small skirmishes) on different groups of Native Americans—the Nemasket raid and the Wessagusset massacre. During these actions, Standish exhibited considerable courage and skill as a soldier, but also demonstrated a brutality that angered Native Americans and disturbed more moderate members of the Colony.
  
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• Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Arabic: نصر حامد ابو زيد‎, IPA: [ˈnɑsˤɾe ˈħæːmed aboˈzeːd]; (July 10, 1943 – July 5, 2010, Cairo) was an Egyptian Qur'anic thinker and one of the leading liberal theologians in Islam. He is famous for his project of a humanistic Qur'anic hermeneutics.
  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was born in Quhafa, some 120 km from Cairo, near Tanta, Egypt on July 10, 1943. He died on 5 July 2010 in Cairo as a result of an unidentified virus infection and was buried in his birthplace, on the same day. He was 67. At the age of 12, Abu Zayd was imprisoned for allegedly sympathising with the Muslim Brotherhood. After receiving technical training he worked for the National Communications Organization in Cairo. At the same time, he started studying at Cairo University, where he obtained his BA degree in Arabic Studies (1972), and later his MA (1977) and PhD degrees (1981) in Islamic Studies, with works concerning the interpretation of the Qur'an. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Cairo University as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor there in 1987.
  
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  Nicolaas Bloembergen
  Nicolaas Bloembergen (born Dordrecht, March 11, 1920) is a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate.
  He received his Ph.D. degree from University of Leiden in 1948; while pursuing his PhD at Harvard, Bloembergen also worked part-time as a graduate research assistant for Edward Mills Purcell at the MIT Radiation Laboratory [1]. He became a professor at Harvard University in Applied Physics.
  Bloembergen enrolled in 1938 at the University of Utrecht to study physics. Bloembergen left the war ravaged Netherlands in 1945 to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University. Six weeks before his arrival, Harvard Professor Edward M. Purcell (along with his graduate students Torrey and Pound) discovered nuclear magnetic resonance. Bloembergen was hired to develop a first NMR machine. While at Harvard he enjoyed classes from J. Schwinger, J. H. van Vleck, and E. C. Kemble. His thesis Nuclear Magnetic Relaxation was submitted in Leiden, where he passed qualifying criteria. After a brief postdoctoral appointment with C. J. Gorter in the Netherlands, he joined Harvard where he was named a junior fellow of Society of Fellows in 1949 and Associate Professor in 1951.
  
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• Nicolaas Diederichs
  Nicolaas Diederichs (1903–1978) served as the third State President of South Africa from 1975 to 1978.
  An economist, Diederichs obtained a doctorate from the University of Leiden. During the 1930s and 1940s he became a prominent figure in Afrikaner nationalist circles. He founded the Reddingsdaadbond organisation to promote the economic wellbeing of Afrikaners.
  Diederichs was a National Party member of Parliament from 1953 to 1975. He served as Minister of Economic Affairs from 1958 to 1967, as Minister of Mines from 1961 to 1964, and as Minister of Finance from 1967 to 1975. In the latter capacity he became known as "Mr Gold." He served as the first chancellor or the Rand Afrikaans University and ceremonial State President from 1975 until his death, after a short illness, of a heart attack on 21 August 1978 in Cape Town.
  
  
  
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  Nicolaes Tulp
  Nicolaes Tulp (9 October 1593 – 12 September 1674) was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character.
  Born Claes Pieterszoon, he was the son of a prosperous merchant active in civic affairs in Amsterdam. From 1611 to 1614 he studied medicine in Leiden. When he returned to Amsterdam he became a respected doctor and married Aagfe Van der Voegh in 1617. An ambitious young man, he adopted the tulip as his family shield and changed his name to Nicolaes (a more proper version of the name Claes) Tulp. He began working on the side in local politics as city treasurer, and in 1622, he became magistrate in Amsterdam.
  The career of Dr. Tulp matched the success of Amsterdam. As the population of Amsterdam grew from 30,000 in 1580 to 210,000 in 1650, Dr. Tulp's career as a doctor and politician made him a man of influence. He drove a small carriage to visit all the patients. Thanks to his connections on the city council, in 1628 Tulp was appointed Praelector Anatomiae at the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons. His wife died in the same year, leaving him with five young children. In 1630 he remarried the daughter of the mayor of Outshoorn and she bore him three children.
  
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  Nikolaas Tinbergen
  Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen FRS (15 April 1907 – 21 December 1988) was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behaviour patterns in animals.
  In the 1960s he collaborated with filmmaker Hugh Falkus on a series of wildlife films, including The Riddle of the Rook (1972) and Signals for Survival (1969), which won the Italia prize in that year and the American blue ribbon in 1971.
  Born in The Hague, Netherlands, he is also noted as the brother of Jan Tinbergen, who won the first Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. He had a third eminent brother, Luuk Tinbergen who committed suicide in 1955 at age 39.
  Tinbergen's interest in nature manifested itself when he was young. He studied biology at Leiden University and was a prisoner of war during World War II. Tinbergen's experience as a prisoner of the Nazis led to some friction with longtime intellectual collaborator Konrad Lorenz, and it was several years before the two reconciled. After the war, Tinbergen moved to England, where he taught at the University of Oxford. Several of his Oxford graduate students went on to become prominent biologists; these include Richard Dawkins, Marian Dawkins, Desmond Morris, and Iain Douglas Hamilton.
  
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  Olaus Rudbeck
  Olaus Rudbeck (also known as Olof Rudbeck the Elder, to distinguish him from his son, and occasionally with the surname Latinized as Olaus Rudbeckius) (September 13, 1630 Västerås – December 12, 1702) was a Swedish scientist and writer, professor of medicine at Uppsala University and for several periods rector magnificus of the same university. He was the son of Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius, who was personal chaplain to King Gustavus Adolphus, and the father of botanist Olof Rudbeck the Younger. Rudbeck is primarily known for his contributions in two fields: human anatomy and linguistics, but he was also accomplished in many other fields including music and botany. (He established the first botanical garden in Sweden at Uppsala, called Rudbeck's Garden, but which was renamed a hundred years later for his son's student, the botanist Carolus Linnaeus.)
  Rudbeck was one of the pioneers in the study of lymphatic vessels. According to his supporters in Sweden, he was the first to discover the lymphatic system and is documented as having shown his findings at the court of Queen Christina of Sweden in the Spring of 1652. However, he did not publish anything about it until the fall of 1653, after Thomas Bartholin, a Danish scientist, had published a description of a similar discovery of his own. (For other early discoverers of the lymphatic system, see Gasparo Aselli and Jean Pecquet).
  
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  Paul Ehrenfest
  Paul Ehrenfest (January 18, 1880 – September 25, 1933) was an Austrian and Dutch physicist, who made major contributions to the field of statistical mechanics and its relations with quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem.
  Paul Ehrenfest was born and grew up in Vienna in a Jewish family from Loštice in Moravia. His parents, Sigmund Ehrenfest and Johanna Jellinek, ran a grocery store. Although the family was not overly religious, Paul studied Hebrew and the history of the Jewish people. Later he always emphasized his Jewish roots. Ehrenfest excelled in grade school but did not do well at the Akademisches Gymnasium, his best subject being mathematics. After transferring to the Franz Josef Gymnasium, his marks improved. In 1899 he successfully passed the final exams.
  He majored in chemistry at the Technische Hochschule, but took courses at the University of Vienna, in particular from Ludwig Boltzmann on his kinetic theory of thermodynamics. These lectures had a profound influence: they were instrumental in stimulating Ehrenfest’s interest in theoretical physics, defined his main area of research for years to come, and provided an example of inspired teaching. At the time it was customary in the German-speaking world to study at more than one university and in 1901 Ehrenfest transferred to Göttingen, which until 1933 was an important centre for mathematics and theoretical physics. There he met his future wife Tatyana A. Afanasyeva, a young mathematician born in Ukraine and educated in Russia. In the spring of 1903 he met H.A. Lorentz during a short trip to Leiden. In the meantime he prepared a dissertation on Die Bewegung starrer Körper in Flüssigkeiten und die Mechanik von Hertz (The motion of rigid bodies in fluids and the mechanics of Hertz). He obtained his Ph.D. degree on June 23, 1904 in Vienna, where he stayed from 1904 to 1905.
  
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• Paul Sophus Epstein
  Paul Sophus Epstein (Warsaw, then part of Imperial Russia, now Poland, March 20, 1883–Pasadena, February 8, 1966) was a Russian-American mathematical physicist. He was known for his contributions to the development of quantum mechanics, part of a group that included Lorentz, Einstein, Minkowski, Thompson^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Rutherford, Sommerfeld, Röntgen, von Laue, Bohr, de Broglie, Ehrenfest and Schwarzschild.
  
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  Paul Verhoeven
  Paul Verhoeven (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpʌu̯l vərˈɦuvə(n)]; born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch film director, screenwriter, and producer who has made movies in both the Netherlands and the United States. Explicitly violent and/or sexual content and social satire are trademarks of both his drama and science fiction films. He is best known for directing the American feature films RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Starship Troopers (1997), and Hollow Man (2000).
  Turkish Delight (1973) received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century at the Netherlands Film Festival. His films altogether received a total of nine Academy Award nominations, mainly for editing and effects. Both RoboCop and Total Recall won an Special Achievement Academy Award. In contrast, his film Showgirls (1995) was poorly received and won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, but has become a cult film over time.
  Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the son of school teacher Wim Verhoeven and hat maker Nel van Schaardenburg. Although born in Amsterdam, the family lived in the village of Slikkerveer.
  
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  Paulus Buys
  Paulus Buys, heer van Zevenhoven and (from 1592) Capelle ter Vliet (Amersfoort, 1531 – IJsselstein, Manor house Capelle ter Vliet, 4 May 1594 [1]) was Grand Pensionary of Holland between 1572 to 1584.
  Buys was born in a wealthy family in Amersfoort in the province of Utrecht. He studied law in France and worked as lawyer at the court of Holland for a few years. In 1561, he became pensionary of Leiden. Later on he also became 'hoogheemraad' (the chief official) of the 'Hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland' (Dutch constitutional body for the security of dikes and polders against the sea and the rivers) of Rhineland (the area around Leiden). Pensionaries were well paid. His task was to advise the city council on legal affairs and serve as the representative of Leiden at the estates of Holland.
  Paulus Buys was appointed as land's advocate of Holland in 1572 before Calvinists took the county. As representative of Holland, he vetoed the decision of the duke of Alva to raise taxes at the estates general of the Netherlands in Brussels. Because of this, he had to flee from the Netherlands and joined Prince William of Orange in Arnstadt. Paulus Buys was Roman Catholic, but he, like many moderate Catholics, joined the rebels (Protestantism was a minority faith in Holland at that time) and secretly helped raising armies for the cause of the prince when he came back to Leiden in the same year. He refused to admit a Spanish garrison in Leiden. Leiden became a part of rebel territory still in 1572. Buys became the head of the rebel 'Raad van State' (one of the constitutional bodies of the Netherlands) in 1573, which would make him the rebel leader if William of Orange died at the siege of Haarlem. The prince did not go to Haarlem, which fell to the Spanish.
  
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  Perizonius
  Perizonius (or Accinctus) was the name of Jakob Voorbroek (October 26, 1651 – April 6, 1715), a Dutch classical scholar, who was born at Appingedam in Groningen.
  He was the son of Anton Perizonius (1626–1672), the author of a once well-known treatise, De ratione studii theologici. Having studied at the University of Utrecht, he was appointed in 1682 to the chair of eloquence and history at Franeker through the influence of J. G. Graevius and Nikolaes Heinsius. In 1693 he was promoted to the corresponding chair at Leiden, where he died on 6 April 1715.
  The numerous works of Perizonius entitle him to a high place among the scholars of his age. Special interest attaches to his edition of the Minerva sive de causis linguae latinae (Salamanca: Renaut, 1587) of Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas or El Brocense (ed. C. L. Bauer, 1793–1801), one of the last developments of the study of Latin grammar in its pre-scientific stage, when the phenomena of language were still regarded as for the most part disconnected, conventional or fortuitous.
  
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• Peter Mair
  Peter Mair (March 3, 1951 – August 15, 2011) was an Irish political scientist. He was professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence.
  Peter Mair was born in Rosses Point, county Sligo, Ireland, and studied history and politics at University College Dublin. He continued to work as assistant professor at the University of Limerick, Strathclyde, Manchester and the European University Institute in Florence during the 1980s. In 1987 at Leiden University he gained a doctorate, which as The changing Irish party system became a standard work on the Irish party system. In 1990, he co-authored the book Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability with Stefano Bartolini. It was awarded the ISSC/Unesco Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research‎. He continued to work at Leiden University becoming professor of comparative politics in 1994 when he held an inaugural address entitled "Party democracies and their difficulties". In 2001 he became co-editor of the journal West European Politics. In 2005 he returned to the European University Institute to invest time in his research into democracy, indifference and populist parties.
  
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  Peter Simon Pallas
  Peter Simon Pallas (22 September 1741 – 8 September 1811) was a German zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia.
  Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of Professor of Surgery Simon Pallas. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University of Göttingen. In 1760, he moved to the University of Leiden and passed his doctor's degree at the age of nineteen.
  Pallas traveled throughout the Netherlands and to London, improving his medical and surgical knowledge. He then settled at The Hague, and his new system of animal classification was praised by Georges Cuvier. Pallas wrote Miscellanea Zoologica (1766), which included descriptions of several vertebrates new to science which he had discovered in the Dutch museum collections. A planned voyage to southern Africa and the East Indies fell through when his father recalled him to Berlin. There, he began work on his Spicilegia Zoologica (1767–80).
  In 1767, Pallas was invited by Catherine II of Russia to became a professor at the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences and, between 1768 and 1774, he led an expedition to central Russian provinces, Povolzhye, Urals, West Siberia, Altay and Transbaikal collecting natural history specimens on their behalf. He explored the Caspian Sea, the Ural, Altai mountains and the upper Amur, reaching as far eastward as Lake Baikal. The regular reports which Pallas sent to St Petersburg were collected and published as Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs [Journey through various provinces of the Russian Empire] (3 vols., 1771–1776). They covered a wide range of topics, including geology and mineralogy, reports on the native peoples and their religions, and descriptions of new plants and animals. In 1776, Pallas was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
  
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• Petrus Cunaeus
  Petrus Cunaeus (1586, Vlissingen – 2 December 1638, Leiden) was the pen name of the Dutch Christian scholar Peter van der Kun. His book The Hebrew Republic is considered "the most powerful statement of republican theory in the early years of the Dutch Republic."
  Cunaeus enrolled at the University of Leyden at the age of fourteen, where he studied Greek and Hebrew. Following a trip to England in 1603, he returned to Leyden to study theology and jurisprudence. He was introduced to rabbinic studies and Aramaic by Johannes Drusius. In 1612, Cunaeus became a professor of Latin, in 1613 of politics, and in 1615 of jurisprudence, a position he held until his death.
  Cunaeus wrote at the peak of Protestant interest in Jewish texts for their political as well as religious authority. He was among the leading Christian scholars of Jewish texts of a generation that included the Frenchman Joseph Scaliger, Hugo Grotius, and Bonaventure Vulcanius in the Netherlands, Johannes Buxtorf, father and son in Germany and; England, John Selden and Daniel Heinsius in England. Cunaeus also corresponded with such contemporary Jewish scholars as Menasseh ben Israel.
  
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  Philip II of Spain
  Philip II of Spain (Spanish: Felipe II; Portuguese: Filipe I ; 21 May 1527 – 13 September 1598) was the King of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. He was also king of Sicily and Naples as Philip I. During his marriage to Mary I, he was King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count.
  Also known as Philip the Prudent (Felipe el Prudente), he ruled one of the world's largest empires which included territories in every continent then known to Europeans.
  Philip was born in Valladolid, the son of Charles I of Spain, and his consort, Isabella of Portugal. During his reign, Spain was the foremost Western European power. Under his rule, Spain reached the height of its influence and power, directing explorations all around the world and settling the colonization of territories in all the known continents. He was described by the Venetian ambassador Paolo Fagolo in 1563 as "slight of stature and round-faced, with pale blue eyes, somewhat prominent lip, and pink skin, but his overall appearance is very attractive." The Ambassador went on to say "He dresses very tastefully, and everything that he does is courteous and gracious."
  
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  Pieter de la Court
  Pieter de la Court (1618 – May 28, 1685) was a Dutch economist and businessman, he is the origin of the successful de la Court family. He pioneered modern thinking about the economic importance of free competition and was an uncompromising advocate of the republican form of government.
  Pieter de La Court was born in Leiden, the son of Pieter de la Court the Elder and Jeanne des Planques. His parents were protestant immigrants from Flanders who settled in Leiden around 1613 in order to be able to practise their faith and to profit from the rapid expansion of Leiden as the world centre of cloth manufacturing. Pieter de la Court the Elder was a successful cloth merchant before he arrived in Leiden. His wife also came from a family of wealthy cloth manufacturers. They had established themselves as members of the local economic elite by the time Pieter was born. The couple had three other children, Jacob (born 1617), Johanna (born 1620) and Johan (1622–1660). Johan is generally seen as the author of at least two of the books that have later been ascribed to Pieter.
  
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• Pieter Steyn
  Pieter Steyn (October 6, 1706, Haarlem – November 5, 1772) was Grand Pensionary of Holland from June 18, 1749 to November 5, 1772.
  He was the son of Johanna Patijn and Adriaan Steyn, burgomaster of Haarlem and studied Law in Leiden between 1724 and 1726. Both his marriages (of 1736 and 1740) were without issue. He was survived by his second wife, Cornelia Schellinger.
  
  
  
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  Pieter Zeeman
  Pieter Zeeman (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈzeːmɑn]) (25 May 1865 – 9 October 1943) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Lorentz for his discovery of the Zeeman effect.
  Pieter Zeeman was born in Zonnemaire, a small town on the island of Schouwen-Duiveland, Netherlands, to Catharinus Forandinus Zeeman, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Willemina Worst.
  He became interested in physics at an early age. In 1883 the Aurora borealis happened to be visible in the Netherlands. Zeeman, then a student at the high school in Zierikzee, made a drawing and description of the phenomenon and submitted it to Nature, where it was published. The editor praised "the careful observations of Professor Zeeman from his observatory in Zonnemaire".
  After finishing high school in 1883 he went to Delft for supplementary education in classical languages, then a requirement for admission to University. He stayed at the home of Dr J.W. Lely, co-principal of the gymnasium and brother of Cornelis Lely, who was responsible for the concept and realization of the Zuiderzee Works. While in Delft, he first met Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who was to become his thesis adviser.
  
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  Rembrandt
  Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)soːn vɑn ˈrɛin], 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch Golden Age painting, although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative.
  Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt's later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.
  
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  René Descartes
  René Descartes (French pronunciation: [ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized form: Renatus Cartesius; adjectival form: "Cartesian"; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system — allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system — was named after him. He is credited as the father of analytical geometry, the bridge between algebra and geometry, crucial to the discovery of infinitesimal calculus and analysis. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the Scientific Revolution and has been described as an example of genius.
  
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  Richard Mead
  Richard Mead (11 August 1673 – 16 February 1754) was an English physician. His work, A Short Discourse concerning Pestilential Contagion, and the Method to be used to prevent it (1720), was of historic importance in the understanding of transmissible diseases.
  The eleventh child of Matthew Mead (1630–1699), Independent divine, Richard was born at Stepney, London. He studied at Utrecht for three years under JG Graevius. having decided to follow the medical profession, he then went to Leiden and attended the lectures of Paul Hermann and Archibald Pitcairne. In 1695 he graduated in philosophy and physic at Padua, and in 1696 he returned to London, entering at once on a successful practice.
  His Mechanical Account of Poisons appeared in 1702, and, in 1703, he was admitted to the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed in that year a paper on the parasitic nature of scabies. In the same year, he was elected physician to St. Thomas' Hospital, and appointed to read anatomical lectures at the Surgeon's Hall. On the death of John Radcliffe in 1714, Mead became the recognized head of his profession; he attended Queen Anne on her deathbed, and in 1727 was appointed physician to George II, having previously served him in that capacity when he was prince of Wales.
  
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  Ronald Venetiaan
  Ronald Runaldo Venetiaan (born June 18, 1936) served as the 6th and 8th President of Suriname. His first term as president ran from 1991 to 1996 after which he lost in the elections to Jules Wijdenbosch. In 2000 however, he regained his former position on the New Front banner, receiving an absolute majority of 37 from 51 votes in the Parliament.
  In 2005 he was re-elected to serve a third term as president and sworn in on August 12, 2005.
  Venetiaan is a mathematician beside all political activity. His surname means Venetian in Dutch.
  
  
  
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  Rudolph Snellius
  Rudolph Snellius (Rudolph Snel van Royen (Oudewater, 5 October 1546 – Leiden, 2 March 1613) was a Dutch linguist and mathematician who held appointments at the University of Marburg and the University of Leiden. Snellius (the name being the Latinized form of his Dutch surname, Snel or Snell) was an influence on some of the leading political and intellectual forces of the Dutch Golden Age.
  Born to a wealthy family in the Netherlands while the latter were under the dominion of the Spanish Habsburgs, Rudolf Snel grew up in the Utrecht city of Oudewater. At maturity he left to study at the University of Cologne under Valentin Naboth and at the University of Heidelberg under Immanuel Tremellius and soon received a teaching position at the University of Marburg. Though trained in Aristotelian logic, he had become impressed with the new logic of Petrus Ramus, which he taught along with mathematics and languages at his university posts.
  In 1578, he returned to Oudewater soon after its devastation in a Spanish siege during the Dutch Revolt. It was not long before he was offered, and accepted, a position as professor of Hebrew and mathematics at the University of Leiden. That summer he married Machteld Cornelisdochter, who had survived the Oudewater massacre. She accompanied him to Leiden, where he taught until his death in 1613. Snellius was buried in the Grote kerk in his hometown Oudewater.
  
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  Simon Episcopius
  Simon Episcopius (January 8, 1583 – April 4, 1643) was a Dutch theologian and Remonstrant who played a significant role at the Synod of Dort in 1618. His name is the Latinized form of his Dutch name Simon Bischop.
  Born in Amsterdam, in 1600 he entered the University of Leiden, where he studied theology under Jacobus Arminius, whose teaching he followed, and Franciscus Gomarus. He graduated M.A. in 1606, but his appointment as a minister was questioned from the Calvinist side. He went to the University of Franeker, where he heard Johannes Drusius. In 1610, the year in which the Arminians presented the Remonstrance to the states of Holland, he became pastor at Bleyswick, a village near Rotterdam; in the following year he advocated the cause of the Remonstrants at The Hague conference, and again at Delft in 1612.
  In 1612 he became professor of theology at Leiden; his appointment awakened the bitter enmity of some the Calvinists. He was attacked by Festus Hommius in Specimen controversiarum Belgicarum (1618).
  
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• Soenario
  Soenario (28 August 1902 – 18 May 1997), also spelled Sunario, was Indonesia's minister of foreign affairs from 1953 to 1955.
  Born in Madiun, East Java, Soenario was educated at Leiden University in the Netherlands and was a founder of Perhimpunan Indonesia (in at least one source referred to as Perhimpunan Mahasiswa Indonesia), an Indonesian students' organization, while studying at the Faculty of Law. He returned to Java in the late 1920s and established a private law practice in Bandung, while becoming active in Sukarno's Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia, later renamed Partai Nasional Indonesia. In 1928, he was Bandung's delegate to the Second Indonesian Youth Congress in Batavia, where he would meet his future wife, Dina Maria Geraldine Maranta Pantouw, then the delegate from Manado.
  On 30 July 1953, Soenario was appointed minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet of the prime minister Ali Sastroamidjojo. Soenario had a key role in the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement and was an essential participant in the Asian-African Conference in 1955. On 23 April 1955, Soenario and Zhou Enlai, premier of the People's Republic of China, signed a treaty ending the dual nationality of the 2.5 million Chinese living in Indonesia. Under the treaty, citizens of Chinese origin would have to choose within two years whether they have Chinese or Indonesian nationality.
  
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  Soetan Sjahrir
  Sutan Sjahrir (5 March 1909 – 9 April 1966), an avant garde and idealistic Indonesian intellectual, was a revolutionary independence leader. He became the first prime minister of Indonesia in 1945, after a career as a key Indonesian nationalist organizer in the 1930s and 1940s.
  Although Sjahrir was one of the most significant Indonesian politicians of his time, he did not engage in politics through a sense of vocation nor out of interest, but rather through a sense of duty to his country and compatriates and commitment to his democratic ideals. Described as an omnivorous intellectual Sjahrir had education at the heart of his passion.
  "I really find teaching the greatest work there is, for helping young people to shape themselves is one of the noblest tasks of society." Sutan Sjahrir.
  Sjahrir was a close associate of the older statesman Mohammad Hatta, a key leader of the Indonesian revolution and leader of the Indonesian underground resistance during the Japanese occupation. When in his fifties his relationship with Soekarno deteriorated Sjahrir was gaoled. He died in exile, his name discredited and erased from Indonesian textbooks. In the 21st century Sjahrir was re-discovered as one of the greatest Indonesian intellectuals and statesmen.
  
  wn.com/Soetan_Sjahrir
• Thomas Girdlestone
  Thomas Girdlestone (Holt, Norfolk, 1758 – 25 June 1822) was an English physician and writer.
  After a classical education at Gresham's School, Holt, Girdlestone joined the army as a surgeon's mate, serving under Colonel Sir Charles Stuart, governor of Minorca, and in India. In 1787 he entered Leiden University to study medicine, and after qualifying settled at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, where he practised as a doctor, wrote books on medicine, and was also a publisher.
  It has been suggested that Girdlestone first advocated arsenic salts as a treatment for Psoriasis and Lepra in 1806, but arsenical preparations have been used for skin diseases since the time of Galen.
  In appearance, Girdlestone was tall and thin, liked to dress in black, with a white cravat, silk stockings and half-gaiters. He had a powdered head and pigtail and carried a gold-headed cane.
  Girdlestone married the widow of the Reverend John Close, and they had one son.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_Girdlestone
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  Thomas van Erpe
  Thomas van Erpe [known as Thomas Erpenius] (September 11, 1584 – November 13, 1624), Dutch Orientalist, was born at Gorinchem, in Holland.
  After completing his early education at Leiden, he entered the university of that city, and in 1608 took the degree of master of arts. On the advice of Scaliger he studied Oriental languages whilst taking his course of theology. He afterwards travelled in England, France, Italy and Germany, forming connections with learned men, and availing himself of the information which they communicated. During his stay at Paris he contracted a friendship with Casaubon, which lasted during his life, and also took lessons in Arabic from an Egyptian, Joseph Barbatus, otherwise called Abu-dakni. However, giving the limited knowledge Barbatus had in Arabic he later took lessons under the Moroccan Diplomat of Andalusian origin Aḥmad ibn Qāsim Al-Ḥajarī who was in France on a mission.
  At Venice he perfected himself in the Turkish, Persic and Ethiopic languages. After a long absence, Erpenius returned to his own country in 1612, and in February 1613 he was appointed professor of Arabic and other Oriental languages, Hebrew excepted, in the University of Leiden. Soon after his settlement at Leiden, animated by the example of Savary de Brèves, who had established an Arabic press at Paris at his own charge, he caused new Arabic characters to be cut at a great expense, and erected a press in his own house.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_van_Erpe
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  Thomas von der Dunk
  Thomas von der Dunk (Soestdijk, 2 July 1961) is a Dutch cultural historian, writer, and columnist who has written for de Volkskrant and HP/De Tijd. A controversial figure, in 2011 Von der Dunk angered Dutch politicians from the ruling government coalition to the extent that they cancelled one of his public lectures.
  Von der Dunk was raised in Bilthoven, and from 1979 to 1988 studied art history at the University of Amsterdam. He was a doctoral candidate in the history department at Leiden University (1989–1993), and received his Ph.D. in 1994, having written a dissertation on the political and ideological characteristics of the cult of monuments in the Holy Roman Empire between the fourteenth and the eighteenth century. He worked at Utrecht University from 1994 to 1999, and from 1999 to 2002 again in Leiden.
  Since 2002 he has been working as a freelance writer and pundit. From 2010 to 2011 he wrote a regular column for HP/De Tijd, but was fired in March 2011., and is now an online columnist for de Volkskrant and a columnist for the regional paper De Gelderlander.
  
  wn.com/Thomas_von_der_Dunk
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  Tiberius Hemsterhuis
  Tiberius Hemsterhuis (9 January 1685 – 7 April 1766) was a Dutch philologist and critic.
  He was born in Groningen. His father, a learned physician, gave him a good early education and he entered the university of his native city in his fifteenth year, where he proved himself the best student of mathematics. After a year or two at Groningen he was attracted to the university of Leiden by the fame of Perizonius. While there he was entrusted with the duty of arranging the manuscripts in the library. Though he accepted an appointment as professor of mathematics and philosophy at Amsterdam in his twentieth year, he had already directed his attention to the study of the ancient languages.
  In 1717 Hemsterhuis was appointed professor of Greek at the University of Franeker, to replace Lambert Bos, but he did not enter on his duties there till 1720. In 1738 he became professor of national history as well. Two years afterwards he was called to teach the same subjects at Leiden, where he died on the 7 April 1766.
  
  wn.com/Tiberius_Hemsterhuis
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  Tim de Zeeuw
  Pieter Timotheus "Tim" de Zeeuw (born 1956, Sleen) is a Dutch astronomer specializing in the formation, structure and dynamics of galaxies. He was educated at Leiden, gaining a degree in mathematics in 1976 and one in astronomy in 1977. He graduated from Leiden with a PhD in astronomy in 1984. After stints in the USA at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at Caltech, he returned to the Netherlands in 1990 to become Professor of Theoretical Astronomy at Leiden. In 2003, he was appointed the scientific director of Leiden Observatory, and since September 2007, he has been the Director General of ESO. In 2010, he was awarded the Brouwer Award by the Division on Dynamical Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society. He is married to astronomer Ewine van Dishoeck.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Tim_de_Zeeuw
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  Tobias Asser
  Tobias Michael Carel Asser (April 28, 1838, Amsterdam – July 29, 1913, The Hague) was a Dutch lawyer and legal scholar of Jewish background, cowinner (with Alfred Fried) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1911 for his role in the formation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the first Hague peace conference (1899). In 1902, he sat on the first arbitration panel to hear an international controversy brought by two states under auspice of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the Pious Fund of the Californias Case. He also advocated for the creation of an international academy of law, which led to founding of the Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée with John Westlake and Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns, the Institut de Droit International and the creation of the Hague Academy of International Law.
  He was son of Carel Daniel Asser (1813-85), and grandson of Carel Asser (1780-1836). He studied law at the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University and was law professor at the University of Amsterdam.
  
  wn.com/Tobias_Asser
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  Ton Koopman
  Ton Koopman (born 2 October 1944 in Zwolle, Netherlands) is a conductor, organist and harpsichordist.
  Koopman had a "classical education" and then studied the organ (with Simon C. Jansen), harpsichord (with Gustav Leonhardt) and musicology in Amsterdam. He specialized in Baroque music and received the Prix d'Excellence for both organ and harpsichord.
  In 1979 Koopman founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and the Amsterdam Baroque Choir in 1992 (now combined as the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir). Koopman concentrates on Baroque music, especially that of Bach, and is a leading figure in the authentic performance movement. While a number of early-music conductors have ventured into newer music, Koopman has not. He has said, "I draw the line at Mozart’s death" (1791). One exception is his recording of the Concert Champêtre of Francis Poulenc, written in 1928.
  Among Koopman's most ambitious projects was the recording of the complete cycle of all of Bach's cantatas, a project completed in 2005. Soloists for the project were among others Lisa Larsson, Sandrine Piau, Sibylla Rubens, Barbara Schlick, Caroline Stam, Deborah York and Johannette Zomer (soprano), Bogna Bartosz, Michael Chance, Franziska Gottwald, Bernhard Landauer, Elisabeth von Magnus, Annette Markert and Kai Wessel (alto), Paul Agnew, Jörg Dürmüller, James Gilchrist, Christoph Prégardien and Gerd Türk (tenor) and Klaus Mertens (bass). Koopman has received many prizes for his recordings. In 2005 he has commenced Dieterich Buxtehude – Opera Omnia, a project to record the complete works of Dieterich Buxtehude. As of March 2010, eleven volumes have been released. He was elected president of the "International Dieterich Buxtehude Society" in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Ton_Koopman
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  Touraj Atabaki
  Touraj Atabaki (Persian: تورج اتابکی‎) is a professor of the "Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia" at the Department of History of the University of Amsterdam and a senior research fellow at the International Institute of Social History. Dr Atabaki is also the President of the European Society for Central Asian Studies (ESCAS), a member of the Conference of the Presidents of the European Associations for Asia Studies, a member of the Council of the Society for Iranian Studies, the visiting senior research fellow of the Middle East Centre (St. Antony's College, University of Oxford), and the visiting professor at the Academy of Sciences of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Moscow. He is also a member of several editorial boards, including the Journal of Azerbaijani Studies, International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) Newsletter, the Central Asian Survey, and The Review of International Affairs board. He is also an expert on Iranian Azeris.
  
  wn.com/Touraj_Atabaki
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  Victor Muller
  Victor Roberto Muller (born 13 September 1959) is a Dutch businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Dutch car company Spyker Cars NV, and former chairman and CEO of the Swedish car company Saab Automobile AB.
  Muller studied Law at Leiden University. After graduating with an LL.M. degree in 1984, he became a lawyer for the Amsterdam office of law firm Baker & McKenzie. In 1989, he joined the management team of offshore company Heerema in Leiden. A management buyout made him part owner of salvage and towing company Wijsmuller in IJmuiden. From 1992 onwards, Muller led several companies, such as Emergo Mode Groep (Emergo Fashion Group), which would be launched on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange as McGregor Fashion Group.
  Muller and Maarten de Bruijn founded Dutch car company Spyker Cars in 2000, renewing the Spyker name which had been used surrounding car production in the 1920s. Muller was the CEO of the company until May 16, 2007, when he was succeeded by Michiel Mol. Muller continued to work for the company as chief designer for a period, but returned to the CEO seat later the same year, due to the split up between Spyker Cars and Spyker F1 (later Force India) while Mol continued as CEO for the latter.
  
  wn.com/Victor_Muller
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  Volkert Doeksen
  Volkert Doeksen (born January 23, 1963) is a private equity investor and founder of AlpInvest Partners (originally NIB Capital), one of the largest private equity investments managers globally with over €40 billion of assets under management. Today, he serves as managing partner and Chief Executive Officer of AlpInvest Partners.
  Additionally, Volkert is member of the Board of NXP Semiconductors in the Netherlands. He also serves on the Advisory Board of private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
  Prior to founding AlpInvest, Doeksen was a director of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (today Dresdner Kleinwort), managing over $3 billion of private equity investments. From 1992 to 1994, Doeksen served as head of the bank's Benelux region, based in the firm's London office. In 1994, he moved to New York to head up DKB's private equity investments, including U.S. leveraged buyouts, mezzanine debt and fund of funds.
  Prior to Kleinwort Benson, Doeksen worked as an investment banker focusing on mergers and acquisitions for Dillon Read from 1989 through 1992. He began his career as a financial analyst in corporate finance for Morgan Stanley International in London in 1987.
  
  wn.com/Volkert_Doeksen
• Wil Roebroeks
  Wil Roebroeks is the professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is widely considered to be the pre-eminent Dutch archaeologist. In 2001 he became a member of the influential Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007 Roebroeks won the Spinozapremie, the most prestigious scientific award in the Netherlands.
  Wil Roebroeks began his academic career as a history student at the Radboud University Nijmegen where he graduated cum laude in 1979. He then studied prehistory at Leiden University, graduating in 1982. In 1989 he obtained his PhD from the same university, again graduating cum laude. In 1991 he won the Eureka! prijs award for his popular science work Oermensen in Nederland. In 1996 he became a professor at Leiden University.
  In 2005 Roebroeks achieved international fame when challenging the Out of Africa theory in Nature. In another article in the same journal Roebroeks published on the discovery of stone tools in Great Britain, older than expected and contradicting the previously held belief that Northern Europe was settled much later than the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.
  
  wn.com/Wil_Roebroeks
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  Willebrord Snell
  Willebrord Snellius (born Willebrord Snel van Royen) (1580 – 30 October 1626, Leiden) was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician. In the west, especially the English speaking countries, his name has been attached to the law of refraction of light for several centuries, but it is now known that this law was first discovered by Ibn Sahl in 984. The same law was also investigated by Ptolemy and in the Middle Ages by Witelo, but due to lack of adequate mathematical instruments (trigonometric functions) their results were saved as tables, not functions.
  The lunar crater Snellius is named after Willebrord Snellius.
  
  Willebrord Snellius was born in Leiden, Netherlands. In 1613 he succeeded his father, Rudolph Snel van Royen (1546–1613) as professor of mathematics at the University of Leiden. In 1615 he planned and carried into practice a new method of finding the radius of the earth, by determining the distance of one point on its surface from the parallel of latitude of another, by means of triangulation. His work Eratosthenes Batavus ("The Dutch Eratosthenes"), published in 1617, describes the method and gives as the result of his operations between Alkmaar and Bergen op Zoom—two towns separated by one degree of the meridian—which he measured to be equal to 117,449 yards (107.395 km). The actual distance is approximately 111 km. Snellius was also a distinguished mathematician, producing a new method for calculating π—the first such improvement since ancient times. He rediscovered the law of refraction in 1621.
  
  wn.com/Willebrord_Snell
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  Willem Einthoven
  Willem Einthoven (Semarang, 21 May 1860 – Leiden, 29 September 1927) was a Dutch doctor and physiologist. He invented the first practical electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) in 1903 and received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1924 for it.
  Einthoven was born in Semarang on Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). His father, a doctor, died when Einthoven was a child. His mother returned to the Netherlands with her children in 1870 and settled in Utrecht. His parents ancestry was Dutch, his mother's ancestry was Dutch and Swiss In 1885, Einthoven received a medical degree from the University of Utrecht. He became a professor at the University of Leiden in 1886.
  Before Einthoven's time, it was known that the beating of the heart produced electrical currents, but the instruments of the time could not accurately measure this phenomenon without placing electrodes directly on the heart. Beginning in 1901, Einthoven completed a series of prototypes of a string galvanometer. This device used a very thin filament of conductive wire passing between very strong electromagnets. When a current passed through the filament, the electromagnetic field would cause the string to move. A light shining on the string would cast a shadow on a moving roll of photographic paper, thus forming a continuous curve showing the movement of the string. The original machine required water cooling for the powerful electromagnets, required 5 people to operate it and weighed some 600 lb. This device increased the sensitivity of the standard galvanometer so that the electrical activity of the heart could be measured despite the insulation of flesh and bones.
  
  wn.com/Willem_Einthoven
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  William the Silent
  William I, Prince of Orange (24 April 1533 – 10 July 1584), also widely known as William the Silent (Dutch: Willem de Zwijger), or simply William of Orange (Dutch: Willem van Oranje), was the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Years' War and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. He was born in the House of Nassau as Count of Nassau-Dillenburg. He became Prince of Orange in 1544 and is thereby the founder of the branch House of Orange-Nassau.
  A wealthy nobleman, William originally served the Habsburgs as a member of the court of Margaret of Parma, governor of the Spanish Netherlands. Unhappy with the centralisation of political power away from the local estates and with the Spanish persecution of Dutch Protestants, William joined the Dutch uprising and turned against his former masters. The most influential and politically capable of the rebels, he led the Dutch to several successes in the fight against the Spanish. Declared an outlaw by the Spanish king in 1580, he was assassinated by Balthasar Gérard (also written as 'Gerardts') in Delft four years later.
  
  wn.com/William_the_Silent
• Wim Blockmans
  Wim Pieter Blockmans (b. 1945, Antwerp, Belgium) is Professor of Medieval History at Leiden University.He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Ghent. He has been Rector of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study since September 2002. He published Emperor Charles V 1500-1558 (London 2002), and Introduction to Medieval Europe 300-1550, (London/New York 2007) 372 pp.: Revised translation of: Eeuwen des Onderscheids. Geschiedenis van de Europese middeleeuwen, (Amsterdam 2002) (in coll. with P. Hoppenbrouwers), 476 pp. (third print 2007) as well as many other books on late medieval and early modern state power.
  He is member of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, Academia Europaea, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, foreign member of The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Verfassungsgeschichte.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Wim_Blockmans