Mathematician:Mathematicians/Sorted By Nation/Netherlands

For more comprehensive information on the lives and works of mathematicians through the ages, see the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, created by John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson.

The army of those who have made at least one definite contribution to mathematics as we know it soon becomes a mob as we look back over history; 6,000 or 8,000 names press forward for some word from us to preserve them from oblivion, and once the bolder leaders have been recognised it becomes largely a matter of arbitrary, illogical legislation to judge who of the clamouring multitude shall be permitted to survive and who be condemned to be forgotten.

-- Eric Temple Bell: Men of Mathematics, 1937, Victor Gollancz, London

Holland

Hudalrichus Regius $($$\text {fl. 1530s}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who showed that not all numbers of the form $2^n - 1$ for odd $n$ are prime.

He showed in $1536$ that $2^9 - 1 = 511 = 7 \times 73$, and also that $2^{11} - 1 = 2047 = 23 \times 89$.
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Adriaan Metius $($$\text {1571}$ – $\text {1635}$$)$

Dutch geometer and astronomer.

Best known now for his approximation $\dfrac {355} {113}$ for $\pi$ (pi), known to the Chinese and Arabic mathematical traditions centuries earlier.
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Willebrord van Royen Snell $($$\text {1580}$ – $\text {1626}$$)$

Dutch applied mathematician and astronomer who founded the modern science of geodesy, by pioneering the technique of triangulation.

Developed an improved method for determining the value of $\pi$ (pi) using polygons.

Discovered the Sine Law.

Known today for rediscovering the Snell-Descartes Law in 1621, governing the refraction of light. He did not publish himself. It first appeared in 1703 when it was published in Christiaan Huygens' Dioptrica.
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Dutch Republic

Frans van Schooten $($$\text {1615}$ – $\text {1660}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who is most known for popularizing the analytic geometry of René Descartes.

His $1659$ and $1661$ edition of his commentary on La Géométrie by René Descartes was highly influential, and used by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.
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Jan de Witt $($$\text {1625}$ – $\text {1672}$$)$

Dutch mathematician and statesman who wrote on geometry and finance.
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Johannes van Waveren Hudde $($$\text {1628}$ – $\text {1704}$$)$

Dutch mathematician, who was also at one time the mayor of Amsterdam and governor of the Dutch East India Company.

Organised the regulation of the waterways of Amsterdam, in the process making major steps towards improvements in sanitation.

Collaborated on a translation into Latin of La Géométrie by René Descartes.
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Christiaan Huygens $($$\text {1629}$ – $\text {1695}$$)$

Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist and horologist.

Studied the rings of Saturn and discovered its moon Titan.

Invented the pendulum clock.

Believed that light travels in waves, hence the Huygens-Fresnel Principle.
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Jacob Marcelis $($$\text {1637}$ – $\text {?}$$)$

Dutch soap merchant and amateur mathematician who gave an approximation to $\pi$ (pi): $3 + \dfrac {1 \, 008 \, 449 \, 087 \, 377 \, 541 \, 679 \, 894 \, 282 \, 184 \, 894} {6 \, 997 \, 183 \, 637 \, 540 \, 819 \, 440 \, 035 \, 239 \, 271 \, 702}$ which he mistakenly claimed was exact.
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Daniel Bernoulli $($$\text {1700}$ – $\text {1782}$$)$

Dutch / Swiss mathematician who worked mostly on hydrodynamics, probability theory and statistics.

Considered by many to be the first mathematical physicist.

Son of Johann Bernoulli and the brother of Nicolaus II Bernoulli and Johann II Bernoulli.

Famously suffered from the jealousy and bad temper of his father Johann Bernoulli who, among other unpleasantnesses, tried to steal his Hydrodynamica and pass it off as his own, naming it Hydraulica.
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Pieter Nieuwland $($$\text {1764}$ – $\text {1794}$$)$

Dutch nautical scientist, chemist, mathematician and poet.

Has been called the Dutch Isaac Newton.

Known for finding the largest cube that can pass through a hole in a unit cube.
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Batavian Republic

Rehuel Lobatto $($$\text {1797}$ – $\text {1866}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who contributed towards the development of solutions to differential equations.

Developer of the Gauss-Lobatto Quadrature Method.
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Netherlands

Diederik Johannes Korteweg $($$\text {1848}$ – $\text {1941}$$)$

Dutch mathematician best remembered for his work on the Korteweg-de Vries equation, together with Gustav de Vries.
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Hendrik Antoon Lorentz $($$\text {1853}$ – $\text {1928}$$)$

Dutch physicist who shared the $1902$ Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect.

Also derived the transformation equations underpinning Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity.
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Thomas Joannes Stieltjes $($$\text {1856}$ – $\text {1894}$$)$

Dutch mathematician whose main fields of study included continued fractions and measure theory.
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Jan Cornelis Kluyver $($$\text {1860}$ – $\text {1932}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who made important contributions to analysis, number theory and geometry.

Professor at Leiden University between 1892 and 1930.
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Pieter Zeeman $($$\text {1865}$ – $\text {1943}$$)$

Dutch physicist who shared the $1902$ Nobel Prize in Physics with Hendrik Antoon Lorentz for his discovery of the Zeeman effect.
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Willem Abraham Wythoff $($$\text {1865}$ – $\text {1939}$$)$

Dutch mathematician known for his work in in combinatorial game theory and number theory.

Also known for his work in geometry, in particular for the Wythoff construction of uniform tilings and uniform polyhedra.
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Gustav de Vries $($$\text {1866}$ – $\text {1934}$$)$

Dutch mathematician known for his work on the Korteweg-de Vries equation, together with Diederik Johannes Korteweg.
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Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer $($$\text {1881}$ – $\text {1966}$$)$

Dutch mathematician working in topology, set theory, measure theory and complex analysis.

Beginning in $1912$, founded the mathematical philosophy of intuitionism.
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Nicolaas George Wijnand Henri Beeger $($$\text {1884}$ – $\text {1965}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who worked on Dirichlet series.

Proved in $1922$ that $3511$ is a Wieferich prime.
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Hendrik Anthony Kramers $($$\text {1894}$ – $\text {1952}$$)$

Dutch physicist who worked with Niels Bohr to understand how electromagnetic waves interact with matter.
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Dirk Jan Struik $($$\text {1894}$ – $\text {2000}$$)$

Dutch mathematician, historian of mathematics and Marxian theoretician who spent most of his life in the United States.
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Arend Heyting $($$\text {1898}$ – $\text {1980}$$)$

Dutch mathematician and logician of the Intuitionist school.
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Bartel Leendert van der Waerden $($$\text {1903}$ – $\text {1996}$$)$

Dutch mathematician and historian of mathematics.
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Egbert Rudolf van Kampen $($$\text {1908}$ – $\text {1942}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who made important contributions to topology, especially to the study of fundamental groups.
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Tjalling Charles Koopmans $($$\text {1910}$ – $\text {1985}$$)$

Dutch American mathematician and economist.
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Adriaan van Wijngaarden $($$\text {1916}$ – $\text {1987}$$)$

Dutch mathematician and computer scientist known for his contributions to numerical analysis and Van Wijngaarden grammar.
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Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn $($$\text {1918}$ – $\text {2012}$$)$

Dutch mathematician known for his contributions to analysis, number theory, combinatorics and logic.
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Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker $($$\text {1922}$ – $\text {1999}$$)$

Dutch mathematician who worked on analytic and geometric number theory. Later he worked on topics in functional analysis.
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Adrianus Johannes Wilhelmus Duijvestijn $($$\text {1927}$ – $\text {1998}$$)$

Dutch computer scientist and mathematician best known for finding the Smallest Perfect Square Dissection.
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Edsger Wybe Dijkstra $($$\text {1930}$ – $\text {2002}$$)$

Hugely influential Dutch pioneer of computer science.
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Dirk van Dalen $($$\text {b. 1932}$$)$

Dutch mathematician and historian of science.
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Arnoud C.M. van Rooij $($$\text {b. 1936}$$)$

Dutch mathematician working in topology and functional analysis.
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Robert Tijdeman $($$\text {b. 1943}$$)$

Dutch mathematician specializing in number theory.
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Pieter Anton Willem van Delft $($$\text {b. 1945}$$)$

Dutch illustrator notable for mathematical work.
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Hermanus Johannes Joseph te Riele $($$\text {b. 1947}$$)$

Dutch mathematician specializing in computational number theory.

Proving the correctness of the Riemann Hypothesis for the first $1.5$ billion non-trivial zeros of the Riemann zeta function, with Jan van de Lune and Dik Winter.

Disproved the Mertens Conjecture, with Andrew Michael Odlyzko.

Known for factoring large numbers of world record size.

Also known for discovering large amicable pairs.

Found a new upper bound for $\map \pi x - \map \Li x$.
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Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. $($$\text {b. 1949}$$)$

Dutch mathematician working principally in computational number theory.

Well known as the discoverer of the elliptic curve factorization method.

Co-discoverer of the Lenstra-Lenstra-Lovász Lattice Basis Reduction Algorithm.

The Cohen-Lenstra Heuristics, a set of precise conjectures about the structure of class groups of quadratic fields, is named after him.
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Jack Botermans $($$\text {b. 1949}$$)$

Dutch mathematician specialising in puzzles and games.
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Frits Beukers $($$\text {b. 1953}$$)$

Dutch mathematician, who works on number theory and hypergeometric functions.
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Arjen Klaas Lenstra $($$\text {b. 1956}$$)$

Dutch mathematician active in cryptography and computational number theory, especially in areas such as integer factorization.

Co-discoverer of the Lenstra-Lenstra-Lovász Lattice Basis Reduction Algorithm.
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Eric Eleterius Coralie van Damme $($$\text {b. 1956}$$)$

Dutch economist known for his contributions to game theory.
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