Irish Dutch Mathematical Connections (Jul 2022)
In previous blogs here, we have surveyed Irish mathematical connections with European places of learning, including Cambridge, Oxford, and France (in each case only up to 1900, so far), as well as Austria and Switzerland. This month we turn to the Netherlands (aka Holland), whose people (and main language) are described as Dutch. Strictly speaking, Holland refers to just 2 of the 12 provinces which make up the Netherlands---the coastal ones containing Rotterdam, the Hague, Delft, Leiden, and the capital Amsterdam---but in general we do not make that distinction below.
Our goal is to include all mathematical people whose training and/or careers included time in both Ireland and Holland. As well as appropriate Irish and Dutch people, we feature other scholars, e.g., those from elsewhere who did a PhD in one country and a postdoc in the other. Our first entry below is a notable person who falls into none of these categories!
Today, the Netherlands has a population of about 18 million people, served by 13 universities which we generally refer to below by the city where they are located. Like anywhere else, the official names of most of these institutions have been modified over time. Amsterdam has two universities, formally known as VU (Vrei Unversiteit) and UvA (Unversiteit van Amsterdam); we use Free Univ of Amsterdam for the former and often just Univ of Amsterdam for the latter. The university in Rotterdam is referred to as the Erasmus University. Radboud Univ in Nijmegen used to be known as Catholic University (Katholieke Universiteit). Note that The Hague (Den Haag) has no university, despite being the centre of the country's administrative and its seat of government.
Many European scholars pre-WWII were educated in an era where the historical record seems to imply that they were awarded doctorates after a few years of study and a dissertation. There is often no explicit mention of earlier degrees.
As usual, we include some people with physics and engineering leanings. In the 1980s, John T Lewis of DIAS had connections with Nicolaas Hugenholtz at Groningen which resulted in 3 Dutch scholars below spending time at DIAS.
Please alert us to any omissions or errors. (Some living people prefer not to be included.)
Cork's Thomas Egan (1889-1915) is not included here, he did maths at UCD and died a few years later after pursuing religious studies in Holland (and England). Likewise, we omit England's David Atkinson, who did his PhD with Belfast's Jim Hamilton at Cambridge and later spent the bulk of his career at the Univ of Groningen.
Thanks to Anne van Weerden, Olivia Bree, the DIAS, and others, for valuable input.
Last updated 30 Jan 2024.
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01. Alicia Boole (later Stott, 1860–1940) was born 8 June in Cork, a daughter of George & Mary Boole. She grew up there and in London, was educated privately and never attended university. In the 1880s, she was a pioneer in the visualisation of 4-dimensional shapes, and coined the term polytope for higher dimensional analogues of polyhedra. She wrote some of the chapters on sections of 3-dimensional solids in Howard Hinton's book A New Era of Thought (1888). She married Walter Stott in 1890. Between 1900 and 1910 she published numerous papers on polytopes, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Groningen, the Netherlands (1914, in absensia). In the 1930s she worked with Donald Coxeter. First Irish woman to do original research (1880s). First Irish woman to write parts of a book dealing with maths (1888). First Irish woman in maths to get honorary doctorate. |
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02. Theoretical physicist Willem van Stockum (1910-1944) was born 20 November in Hattem, east of Amsterdam, Holland, and grew up there and in Dublin. He was educated at first at TCD (BA & gold medal 1933), then at Toronto (MA 1935, probably under John L. Synge) and Edinburgh (PhD 1937). His doctorate on "Axially Symmetric Gravitational Fields" was probably done under E. T. Whittaker. After a few years at the IAS (Princeton) and Univ of Maryland, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. He became a WWII pilot casualty in 1944. |
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03. Theoretical physicist Michael Fry was born in Houston, Texas, and was educated at Georgetown (BSc 1962) and MIT (PhD 1968). His thesis on "Scalar QED" was done under Ken Johnson. After spells at Toronto (1968-1970), US Naval Ord Lab (1970-1973), Graz (1973-1974, Vienna (1974-1975), Tubingen (1975-1976), MPI (1976-1977), and Groningen in the Netherlands (1978-1980), he settled at TCD. TCD / DIAS / InspireHap |
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04. Marina Kok (later Smyth) was born to Dutch parents in Cork and grew up in Ireland and Holland. She was educated at UCC (BSc 1963, MSc 1964). Moving to the USA, for many years she has worked as a librarian at the Univ of Notre Dame, in time specialising in medieval manuscripts. Her 1984 PhD from Notre Dame was on "Understanding the Universe in Seventh-century Ireland". |
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05. Pat Norris was born 21 March in Dublin and was educated at UCD (BSc 1963, MSc 1964). After 2 years at Elliott Automation (London), he worked in the USA for NASA via RCA Service Co (at Goddard) & TRW (1966-1970), followed by a decade at the European Space Agency (Holland & France, 1970-1980. The rest of his career was spent at Logica/CGI (London, 1980-2018. His books include |
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06. Peter Currie was born in England and educated at Manchester (BSc 1965) and East Anglia (MSc 1966, PhD 1968). His thesis on "Wave in Classes of Elastic Materials" was done under Limerick's Michael Hayes. He lectured at Coleraine (1970-1974) and UCD (1974-1978), before moving to Holland. After working in production technology (research and operations) for Shell (1978-1997), he worked on produced water re-injection and lectured in oil and gas production at Delft Tech Univ. |
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07. Astronomer Evert Meurs was born in Holland and was educated at Univ of Amsterdam (MSc 1976) and Leiden (PhD 1982). His thesis on "The Seyfert Galaxy Population: A Radio Survey; Luminosity Function; Related Objects" was done under Harry van de Laan. His career started with postdocs at MPI (Heidelberg) and Cambridge, followed by stints at ESO (Garching) and MPI (Garching). He then served as the director of Dunsink (1994-2007) while working at DIAS (1994-2010). He also held an honorary position at TCD (1995-2012) and an adjunct position at DCU (2007-2011). The rest of his career was spent back at Univ of Amsterdam (2011-). |
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08. Theoretical Physicist Hans Maassen was born 8 June in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and was educated at Utrecht (MSc 1976) and Groningen (PhD 1982). His thesis on "On a Class of Quantum Langevin Equations and the Question of Approach to Equilibrium" was done under Nico Hugenholtz & John Lewis. After spells at DIAS (1982-1984) and back at Delft (1984-1985), he settled at Nijmegen. Since 2013, he also has an appointment at Univ of Amsterdam. His interests include quantum and non-commutative probability. He has supervised 4 PhD students. Radboud / Amsterdam / ResearchGate / LinkedIn |
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09. Theoretical physicist Michiel van den Berg was born 30 November in Schiedam, west of Rotterdam, Holland, and was educated at Delft (MSc 1976) and Groningen (PhD 1981). His thesis on "On Phase Transitions of Some Models in Statistical Mechanics" was done under Nico Hugenholtz & John Lewis. After a year at Shell in Amsterdam, and a postdoc at DIAS (1982-1984), he moved to Heriot-Watt (1984-1995). He spent the rest of his career at Bristol (1996-2017). His interests span spectral geometry, partial differential equations, shape optimisation, and geometric spectral theory. He has supervised 4 PhD students. |
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10. Eddie Doolan was born in Waterford and was educated at TCD (BA 1975, MSc 1977, PhD 1980), his thesis on "Uniform Numerical Methods for Problems with Initial and Boundary Layers" being done under John Miller. His career has been spent working in industry and energy in Holland. |
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11. Willy Schilders was born 26 August in Arhemin, Holland, and was educated at Nijmegen (MSc 1978) and TCD (PhD 1980). His thesis on "Uniform Numerical Methods for Problems with Initial and Boundary Layers" was done under John Miller at TCD (1980). After a long period at Philips in Eindhoven (1980-2006), more recently he has been at the university in Eindhoven where he supervised 15 PhD students. He has authored 4 books. His interests are focussed on industrial mathematics and scientific computing. |
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12. Teunis (Tony) Dorlas was born 24 November in Groningen in Holland, and was educated entirely at the university there (BSc 1980, MSc 1981, PhD 1987), his thesis "On Some Aspects of Renormalization Group Theory and Hierarchical Models" being done under Nico Hugenholtz. After a postdoc at DIAS (1987-1989) under John Lewis & Joe Pulé, and a decade at Swansea, in 2000 he returned to DIAS, where he has supervised several PhDs. His book Statistical Mechanics: Fundamentals and Model Solutions (1999) in now in a new edition. He works on the theory of quantum computing and also on Pirogov-Sinai theory. |
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13. Bernard Hanzon was born in Holland and grew up in the Hague. He was educated at Leiden and Amsterdam and Rotterdam (PhD 1986). His thesis on "Identifiability, Recursive Identification and Spaces of Linear Dynamical Systems" was done under Michiel Hazewinkel. His career started at the Free Univ of Amsterdam, and around 2000 he settled at UCC. His interests have expanded from control theory to include financial mathematics too. He has had 2 PhD students at UCC, and he co-edited the 2006 book Constructive Algebra and System Theory. UCC / LinkedIn / ResearchGate |
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14. Danny Birmingham was born in Birmingham and grew up there and in Dublin. He was educated at TCD (BA 1982?, PhD 1985). His thesis on "Topics in Theorerical Physics" was done under Siddharhta Sen. His career started at Imperial College (1985-1987), ICTP (Trieste, 1987-1980), CERN (1990-1992) and Univ of Amsterdam (1992-?). He was at UCD (2000?-2005?), then Univ of the Pacific, and since 2011 has been at San Joaquin Delta College. |
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15. Anne Snel was born in Dublin and was educated at first at UCD (BSc). After many years engaged in maths tutoring, she did her PhD on "Developing and Implementing Mathematical Models for the Prevalence, Incidence and Initiation into Cocaine Use in Ireland" under Catherine Comiskey (TCD, 2012). Her career since then has been in software (Holland and Ireland) and teaching at the secondary level in Malaysia. She also published in the health arena. |
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16. Applied Mathematician Stephen B. O'Brien was born in Cork city, and was educated at first at UCC (BSc 1984, MSc 1985). He then worked for Philips in Holland (1986-1993), where he still maintains research links). His 1992 DPhil at Oxford on "Free Boundary Problems from Industry" was done under Alan Tayler. Since then he has been at the Univ of Limerick, where he co-directs MASCI. His interests are in the modelling of physical and industrial processes, especially via asymptotic and numerical techniques. He has supervised numerous PhD students. UL / MASCI / LinkedIn / ResearchGate |
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17. Breanndán Ó Nualláin was educated at UCD (BSc TPhy 1987). Most of his career has been spent at Univ of Amsterdam, first as a researcher at FMG (1991-2001) and then at the Institute of Informatics (2001-2009). Since then he has lectured in CS at the Amsterdam University College. His interests include machine learning and data science, and he works on building large-scale computer systems for solving modelling problems. |
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18. Plasma astrophysicist Turlough Downes was born 9 May in Dublin, and was educated at TCD (BA 1993, PhD 1996+), his thesis on "Numerical Simulations of Jets from Young Stellar Objects" being done under Luke Drury & Tom Ray at DIAS. After postdocs at Utrecht (1997-1998) and TCD (1998-2000), he settled at DCU. He has supervised 9 PhD students and co-authored the book Jets from Young Stars V. His interests include star formation and computational fluid dynamics. DCU / LinkedIn / GoogleScholar / ResearchGate |
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19. Theoretical physicist Andrei Parnachev was born in Novosibirsk, Russia, and was educated at Novosibirsk State Univ (MSc 1997) and the Univ of Chicago (PhD 2003). His thesis on "Strings and Branes in Anti de Sitter Spacetimes" was done under David Kutasov. His career started at Rutgers (2003-2006), Stony Brook (2006-2011), and Leiden in Holland (2011-2014), before settling at TCD. His research includes gauge/gravity duality which relates strongly interacting quantum field theories to gravitational theories. He has had 2 PhD students. TCD / GoogleScholar / LinkedIn |
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20. Theoretical physicist Ruth Britto was born in September in Binghamton, New York, and was educated at MIT (BSc 1996) and Harvard (PhD 2002). Her thesis on "Bound States of Supersymmetric Black Holes" was done under Andrew Strominger. Her career included stints at IAS (Princeton), Univ of Amsterdam, Fermi Nat Acc Lab, and CEA (Paris), before settling at TCD in 2014. Her interests include fundamental interactions. and scattering amplitudes. |
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21. Theoretical physicist Joost Slingerland was born in Holland and was educated at Utrecht (MSc 1998) and Univ of Amsterdam (PhD 2002), his thesis on "Hopf Symmetry and its Breaking: Braid Statistics and Confinement in Planar Physics" being done under Ferdinand Bais. His career started at Heriot-Watt (2002-2004), Microsoft (2004-2006), and UC Riverside & Caltech (2006-2007), before moving to Ireland. He has been at DIAS (2007-2009) and since 2008 at Maynooth. |
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22. Francis Dolan (born Sligo, grew up Kilcadden, near Killygordon, Donegal, 1977-2011) was educated at first at UCG (BSc 1997, MSc 1998), earning an NUI Travelling Studentship there. His 2003 PhD on "Aspects of Superconformal Quantum Field Theory" was done at Cambridge under Hugh Osborn. He did numerous postdocs (at Cambridge / DIAS / Southampton / Amsterdam / Crete) before his untimely death. His interests included superconformal characters and partition functions. Conf / Memorial / Dedication / Web |
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23. Sebastian Wieczorek was born 4 August in Chociwel, east of Szczecin, in northwest Poland, and was educated at the Universities of Poznan (Dip 1998) and the Free Univ of Amsterdam (PhD 2002). His thesis on "The Dynamical Complexity of Optically Injected Semiconductor Lasers" was done under Daan Lenstra & Bernd Krauskopf. He then worked at Sandia Nat Lab (2002-2006) and at the Univ of Exeter (2006-2014) before settling at UCC, where he now heads up Applied Maths. His interests include nonlinear dynamics and applied bifurcation theory. UCD / ResearchGate / LinkedIn |
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24. Sejong Park was born in Korea, and was educated Seoul National Univ (BSc 1998, MSc 2002) and Aberdeen (PhD 2008). His thesis on "The Weighted Fusion Category Algebra" being done under Markus Linckelmann. His career included Aberdeen (2009-2011), Sogagng Univ (2011), École Poly Féd Lausanne (2011-2013), NUIG (2013-2016) and Southampton (2016-2017). Since 2018, he has worked in data science in Holland. |
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25. Sander Zwegers was born 11 April in Oosterhout, southern Holland, and was educated at Utrecht (MSc 1998, PhD 2002). His thesis on "Mock Theta Functions" was done under Don Zagier & Roelof Bruggeman; it drew a lot of attention as it concerned breakthroughs on material in Ramanujan's so-called lost notebook. His career started at MPI Bonn (2002-2007) and UCD (2007-2011). Since then he has been at Univ Cologne. |
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26. Marc van Dongen was born in Holland, and was educated at and at UCC (PhD 2002). His thesis on "Constraints, Varieties, and Algoritms" was done under Pat Fitzpatrick. He has been in the CS department at UCC since then, where he has supervised 1 PhD student and authored the book LaTeX and Friends. |
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27. Mathematical physicist Tony Lyons was educated at first at TCD (BA 2004) and the Free Univ of Amsterdam (MSc 2007). His PhD on "Integrable Systems as Fluid Models with Physical Applications" was done under Rossen Ivanov. After a year at UCD, he settled at WIT (now SETU). His interests include fluid dynamics. |
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28. Theoretical physicist Jan Manschot was born in July in Alphen aan den Rijn, east of Leiden, Holland, and was educated at Delft (BSc 2004) and Amsterdam (PhD 2008). His PhD on "Partition Functions for Supersymmetric Black Holes" was done under Erik Verlinde. After some postdocs and positions at Bonn and Lyon, he settled at TCD. His interests include the dynamics of non-perturbative objects of gauge, gravity and string theories. He has supervised 3 PhDs. |
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29. Applied mathematician Antje van der Net was born in Singur, Holland and was educated at Delft (BSc in engineering 2005) and TCD (PhD 2008). Her thesis on "Generation, Characterisation and Solidification of Crystalline Microfoam" was done under Stefan Hutzler. Her career started with a decade in industry with BASF in Germany. Since 2017 she has been at Norwegian Univ of Science & Technology. Her specialities inclde oil reucovery. |
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30. Olaf Smits was born in Holland and was educated at first at Univ of Amsterdam (BSc 2005, MSc 2008), with a thesis on "Clustered States in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect". His doctorate on "Interferometry and Non-Equilibrium Noise in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect" was done under Joost Slingerland at Maynooth (awarded by TCD, 2013+). He then switched to quantitative risk analysis, first at AIB in Dublin. Since 2017, he has been back in Amsterdam. |
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31. Fluid dynamics expert Yanji Wei was born in China and was educated at first at Tongji Univ (BE 2006), and then at the Second Inst of Oceanography (MSc geology 2009), where he subsequently worked till 2012. His 2015 PhD on "Development of Numerical Tools for Oscillating Wave Surge Converters" was done under Frederick Dias at UCD. After a postdoc at Groningen (2016-2019) he worked for 3 years as a marine engineer in Holland. Since 2022, he has been at the Eastern Institute for Adv Study (Ningbo, Zhejiang). |
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32. Frank Chambers was born in London and grew up in Dublin. He was educated at TCD (BA in Th Physics 2015) and Univ of Amsterdam (PhD 2019). His thesis on "Thermonuclear Burst Oscillations and Ocean Waves" was done under Anna Watts. After a brief postdoc at Univ Amsterdam he became a data scientist. |