Wim Ebbinkhuijsen (born 24 December 1939,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

) is a retired

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People ...

computer scientist who is considered to be one of the "fathers of

COBOL COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily ...

". in 1979 he initiated the ''International ISO COBOL Working Group''. From 1967 he was a member, and from 1978 until 2003 he was the chairman of the ''Dutch COBOL Committee'' ("Nederlandse COBOL Commissie"). From 1998 until 2001 he was also a member of the '' NCITS/

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...

COBOL committee X3J4''. As such, he has designed and rewritten dozens parts of the current COBOL standard. He has been active for many years with Exin (''EXamenINstituut'', "Dutch examination Institute"), where he acted as member and later as chairman of the examining-board ''T2-COBOL''. He has written many books about COBOL and he wrote the first International Standard for the programming language BASIC. At October 22, 2004 he left the COBOL world after 42 years of commitment, with a valedictory symposium in the auditorium of the

Vrije Universiteit The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, being founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research ...

. For his enormous contribution to COBOL he received an

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operatio ...

award, and invested as a Knight of the

Order of Orange-Nassau The Order of Orange-Nassau ( nl, Orde van Oranje-Nassau, links=no) is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands. The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has ...

(''Ridder in de Orde van Oranje Nassau'').

External links

valedictory symposium VU, Amsterdam
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ebbinkhuijsen, Wim 1939 births Living people Dutch computer scientists Scientists from Amsterdam Knights of the Order of Orange-Nassau