Jan van Leeuwen (born 17 December 1946 in Waddinxveen) is a Dutch

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and emeritus professor of computer science at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; , formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public university, public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2023, it had an enrollment of ...

.Curriculum vitae
, retrieved 2011-03-27.

Education and career

Van Leeuwen completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at

in 1967 and received a PhD in mathematics in 1972 from the same institution under the supervision of Dirk van Dalen.. After postdoctoral studies at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

and faculty positions at SUNY at Buffalo and the

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

, he returned to Utrecht as a faculty member in 1977. He was head of his department from 1977 to 1983, and again from 1991 to 1994, and dean from 1994 to 2009. Jan van Leeuwen was one of the founders of

Informatics Europe Informatics Europe is the European association uniting university departments, research labs and companies in the field of informatics (also known as computer science). Overview Founded in 2006,Bertrand Meyer and Willy Zwaenepoel, ''European Compu ...

Research

Jan van Leeuwen contributed to many fields of

theoretical computer science Theoretical computer science is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that focuses on the Abstraction, abstract and mathematical foundations of computation. It is difficult to circumscribe the theoretical areas precisely. The Associati ...

, notably to

algorithm design In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for perf ...

and

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and explores the relationships between these classifications. A computational problem ...

, and to the philosophy of computing. Among his doctoral students are algorithms researcher and Utrecht faculty member Hans Bodlaender and notable game software developer and former fellow Utrecht faculty member, Mark Overmars. Van Leeuwen is well known as a former series editor of the ''

Lecture Notes in Computer Science ''Lecture Notes in Computer Science'' is a series of computer science books published by Springer Science+Business Media since 1973. Overview The series contains proceedings, post-proceedings, monographs, and Festschrifts. In addition, tutorials ...

''.

Awards and honors

Van Leeuwen is a member of the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences and Humanities since 1992, and in 2006 he was elected to the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

. In 2008 he received an honorary doctorate from the

RWTH Aachen RWTH Aachen University (), in German ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen'', is a German public research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With more than 47,000 students enrolled in 144 study prog ...

. In 2013 he received the

ACM Distinguished Service Award The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

, together with Gerhard Goos and Juris Hartmanis.

Books

Jan van Leeuwen was the editor of the two-volume '' Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science''. In 2013, he and S. Barry Cooper published '' Alan Turing: His Work and Impact'' (

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

, ), a special edition of the collected works of

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

. This book won the R.R. Hawkins Award 2013.

Family

His son, Erik Jan van Leeuwen, is also an academic computer scientist. He was a senior researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, and currently is an assistant professor and research scientist in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at

.Erik Jan van Leeuwen's home page
retrieved 2018-02-21.

References

External links

Home page
retrieved 01-01-2024 * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Leeuwen, Jan 1946 births Living people Dutch computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Researchers in geometric algorithms Utrecht University alumni University at Buffalo faculty Pennsylvania State University faculty Academic staff of Utrecht University Members of Academia Europaea Officers of the Order of Orange-Nassau People from Waddinxveen