The word rector ("ruler", from the Latin regere and rector meaning "ruler" in Latin) has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator.

The term and office of a rector are called a rectorate.

The rector is the highest academic official of many universities and in certain other institutions of higher education, as well as even in some secondary-level schools.

The title is used widely in universities across Europe. It is also very common in Latin American countries. It is also used in Russia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Israel, all of which are strongly influenced by European traditions. In some universities, the title is phrased in an even loftier manner, as Rector Magnificus or Lord Rector.

A notable exception to this terminology is in England and elsewhere in Great Britain, where the head of a university has traditionally been referred to as a "Chancellor". This pattern has been followed in the Commonwealth, the United States, and other countries under British influence. In Scotland, many universities are headed by a Chancellor, with the Lord Rector designated as an elected representative of students at the head of the university court.

Angela Dorothea Merkel, German: [aŋˈɡeːla doʁoˈteːa ˈmɛʁkl̩] ( listen); née Kasner (born 17 July 1954) is the Chancellor of Germany and Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany.

A physical chemist by professional background, Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989 and briefly served as the deputy spokesperson for Lothar de Maizière's democratically elected East German government prior to the German reunification. Following reunification in 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag, where she has represented the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern since. She served as Federal Minister for Women and Youth 1991–1994 and as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety 1994–1998 in Helmut Kohl's fourth and fifth cabinets. She was Secretary General of the CDU 1998–2000, and was elected chairperson in 2000. From 2002 to 2005, she was also chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary coalition.

After her election as Chancellor following the 2005 federal election, she led a grand coalition consisting of her own CDU party, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), until 2009. In the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the votes, and formed a coalition government with the CSU and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).

Frans Zwarts (born 1949 in The Hague) was the rector magnificus (academic president) of the University of Groningen (2002-2011) and a linguist and professor in the Department of Dutch Language and Culture with a specialty in semantics. His first degree was in general linguistics at the University of Amsterdam, and his PhD was completed at the University of Groningen in 1986 with the dissertation Categoriale grammatica en algebraïsche semantiek; een onderzoek naar negatie en polariteit in het Nederlands (Categorial grammar and algebraic semantics: An investigation of negation and polarity in Dutch). He was appointed professor of Dutch linguistics in Groningen in 1987, and was scientific director of the research school (onderzoekschool) Behavioral & Cognitive Neurosciences (BCN) from 1999 until 2002, when he was elected rector magnificus. He is the president of the National Dyslexia Commission and member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

He is best known for his work on negation and polarity, in particular the so-called Zwarts hierarchy of polarity items. This hierarchy recognizes three types of polarity items: weak items, acceptable in all downward-entailing contexts, strong items, acceptable in anti-additive contexts and superstrong items, acceptable in antimorphic contexts. See Zwarts (1998). Other work includes a study of the relational properties of determiners (a contribution to generalized quantifier theory), Zwarts (1983), and a paper on extraction from prepositional phrases in Dutch (Zwarts 1978). More recent work includes a number of publications on dyslexia and neurolinguistics.

Philip Verheyen (April 23, 1648 – January 28, 1711) was a Belgian surgeon.

As the third child of eight, Philip Verheyen was born in Verrebroek, Belgium, (most likely in his parents' house, standing on a small plot of owned land in the area called "Borring", close to the border with Meerdonk) to Thomas Verheyen and Joanna Goeman. He was baptized in the parish church of Verrebroek on the 24th of April 1648. Little is known of his childhood. As a young boy he was probably a cowherd and it is assumed that he learned to read and write at the local parish school. Local folk tales claim that he had such a brilliant memory that he could recite the pastor's sermon after attending mass on Sunday.

The pastor of the village took him under his wing and he was sent to Leuven in 1672 where he spent three years at Heilige-Drievuldigheidscollege. He began his studies in the arts department, proving to be a talented draftsman. It was here that he was first introduced to anatomy drawing, copying Vesalius's 15th century woodblock prints and plaster reproductions of Greek and Roman antiquity. It was also at this time that he learnt the technique of etching, which he put to use in his famous book, Corporis Humani Anatomia (1693).