Kim (Keimpe) Henry Veltman (5 September 1948 – 1 April 2020) was a Dutch/Canadian historian of science and

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

, director of the Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute (VMMI), consultant and author, known for his contributions in the fields of "linear perspective and the visual dimensions of science and art," new media, culture and society.

Biography

Born in

Workum Workum () is a city located in the municipality of Súdwest-Fryslân in Friesland, Netherlands. It received city rights in 1399 and is one of the eleven cities of Friesland. It had a population of 4,435 in January 2017.Friesland Friesland (, ; official fry, Fryslân ), historically and traditionally known as Frisia, is a province of the Netherlands located in the country's northern part. It is situated west of Groningen, northwest of Drenthe and Overijssel, north of ...

, Veltman emigrated with his family in 1951, where he obtained Canadian citizenship. Veltman obtained his BA in history at

York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

in 1969, where in 1970 he also obtained his MA in renaissance history. In 1975 he received his PhD in history and philosophy of science at the Warburg Institute in London, where he had received education from B.A.R. Carter, Alistair Cameron Crombie,

Ernst Gombrich Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich (; ; 30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian who, after settling in England in 1936, became a naturalised British citizen in 1947 and spent most of his working life in the United Kin ...

, A.I. Sabra, and Charles B. Schmitt. After his graduation and some years in research and in industry as a post-doctoral fellow, he started as Assistant Professor and Canada Research Fellow at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

in 1984. From 1990 to 1995 he was director of the Perspective Unit of the McLuhan Program at the Faculty of Education of the

. In 1998 he moved to

Maastricht Maastricht ( , , ; li, Mestreech ; french: Maestricht ; es, Mastrique ) is a city and a municipality in the southeastern Netherlands. It is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. Maastricht is located on both sides of the ...

, where he became director of Maastricht McLuhan Institute. Since 2006 he was Scientific Director of the Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute. Over the years he has been Visiting Professor at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

in 1983–84; at the

University of Siena The University of Siena ( it, Università degli Studi di Siena, abbreviation: UNISI) in Siena, Tuscany, is one of the oldest and first publicly funded universities in Italy. Originally called ''Studium Senese'', the institution was founded in 1240 ...

in 1991; at the Sapienza University of Rome in 1992; at the Università di Roma II in 1995; and at

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning World ...

in 1994–96. In July 2017, he was a keynote speaker at the

EVA London The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts conferences (EVA Conferences for short, aka Electronic Information, the Visual Arts and Beyond) are a series of international interdisciplinary conferences mainly in Europe, but also elsewhere in the wor ...

2017 Conference. Veltman died of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

in 2020. The EVA London 2020 Conference proceedings was dedicated to his memory, including a eulogy by his colleague Carl Smith and others.

Work

''Studies on Leonardo da Vinci I,'' 1986

In his 1986 book "Studies on Leonardo da Vinci I: Linear Perspective and the Visual Dimensions of Science and Art," Veltman gave a new evaluation of the work of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

by focusing upon "Leonardo's visual as opposed to his verbal statements."

Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute

The Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute (VMMI) is an institute for new media, named after

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

. The institute was founded in 1998 as Maastricht McLuhan Institute, and renamed to 2004. The institute explores the "historical effects of new media on the trivium (grammar, logic and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music) - or the arts and sciences - and implications for those effects on knowledge and culture then and today. VMMI proposes to continue these explorations, with a new focus: Knowledge Organization and Cultural Computing."

Selected publications

* * * * * * * Veltman, Kim H. (2014), "
Alphabets of Life
'", retrieved 29 August 2020

References

External links

Kim H. Veltman
at sumscorp.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Veltman, Kim H. 1948 births 2020 deaths People from Nijefurd York University alumni Alumni of the Warburg Institute Academic staff of the University of Toronto Academic staff of Maastricht University 20th-century Dutch historians 20th-century Canadian historians Canadian male non-fiction writers Historians of science Canadian art historians Leonardo da Vinci scholars Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands