Willem Jan Heiser (born 19 January 1949) is a Dutch social scientist who was Professor of Psychology, Statistical Methods and Data Theory at the

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince o ...

between 1989 and 2014.Prof. dr. Willem Heiser
at lumc.nl, 2005. Accessed September 30, 2013

Biography

Heiser was born on 19 January 1949 in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

. He received his PhD in 1981 from the

with a thesis entitled "Unfolding analysis of proximity data" advised by John van de Geer and

Jan de Leeuw Jan de Leeuw (born December 19, 1945) is a Dutch statistician and psychometrician. He is distinguished professor emeritus of statistics and founding chair of the Department of Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles. In addition, he is t ...

. In the year 1981-82 he performed Postdoctoral research at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

in New Jersey. Back at the University of Leiden in 1982 he joined the Department of Data Theory, were in April 1989 he was appointed Professor of Psychology & Statistics. Since 2007 he has been Scientific director of the Interuniversity Graduate School for Psychometrics and Sociometrics, and since 2008 also scientific director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Leiden. From 2002 to 2015 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the

Journal of Classification ''Journal of Classification'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. It is the official journal of The Classification Society. The journal publishes three issues a year on topics in the field of classifica ...

. Heiser's research interests are in the fields of "multivariate categorical data using multidimensional scaling and classification techniques... advanced clustering and classification methodology for FMRI data." At his farewell speech on 31 January 2014, Heiser was knighted in the

Order of the Dutch Lion The Order of the Netherlands Lion, also known as the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands ( nl, De Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw, french: L'Ordre du Lion Néerlandais) is a Dutch order of chivalry founded by King William I of the Netherlands on ...

by the mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink.

Publications

Heiser has authored and co-authored numerous publicationsWillem J. Heiser
List of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server. * 1981. ''Unfolding analysis of proximity data''. Doctorate thesis Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. * 1994. ''Models for Asymmetric Proximities''. With Berrie Zielman. * 2001.
SPSS Categories 11.0
'. With

Jacqueline Meulman Jacqueline Meulman (born 7 July 1954) is a Dutch statistician and professor emerita of Applied Statistics at the Mathematical Institute of Leiden University. Biography Born in The Hague, Meulman received her master's degree in mathematical psyc ...

. Chicago: SPSS, 2001. Articles, a selection: * Heiser, Willem J.
Convergent computation by iterative majorization: theory and applications in multidimensional data analysis
" Recent advances in descriptive multivariate analysis (1995): 157-189. * Groenen, Patrick JF, and Willem J. Heiser.
The tunneling method for global optimization in multidimensional scaling
" Psychometrika 61.3 (1996): 529-550. * Meulman, Jacqueline J., Anita J. Van der Kooij, and Willem J. Heiser.
Principal components analysis with nonlinear optimal scaling transformations for ordinal and nominal data
" Handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (2004): 49-70.

References

External links

at Leiden University
Curriculum Vitae
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heiser, Willem J. 1949 births Living people Dutch social scientists Knights of the Order of the Netherlands Lion Leiden University alumni Academic staff of Leiden University Scientists from Rotterdam Psychometrika editors Quantitative psychologists