Jan Karel Lenstra (born 19 December 1947, in

Zaandam Zaandam () is a city in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland, Netherlands. It is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad and received City rights in the Netherlands, city rights in 1811. It is located on the river Zaan ...

) is a Dutch

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

and

operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

er, known for his work on

scheduling algorithm In computing, scheduling is the action of assigning resources to perform tasks. The resources may be processors, network links or expansion cards. The tasks may be threads, processes or data flows. The scheduling activity is carried out by ...

s, local search, and the

travelling salesman problem In the Computational complexity theory, theory of computational complexity, the travelling salesman problem (TSP) asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible ...

. Lenstra received his Ph.D. from the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

in 1976, advised by

Gijsbert de Leve Gijsbert "Gijs" de Leve (15 August 1926 – 19 November 2009) was a Dutch mathematician and operations researcher, known for his work on Markov decision process. Gijs de Leve is considered the founder of operations research in the Netherlands. ...

. He then became a researcher at the

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica The (abbr. CWI; English: "National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science") is a research centre in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is part of the institutes organization of the Dutch Research Cou ...

, where he remained until 1989. After taking positions at the

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. TU/e, is a public university, public technical university in the Netherlands, situated in Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its Bachelor of Science, BS ...

(where he became Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science) and the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

, he returned to CWI as its director in 2003. He stepped down in 2011, and at that time became a CWI Fellow.. He was editor-in-chief of ''

Mathematics of Operations Research ''Mathematics of Operations Research'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal established in February 1976. It focuses on areas of mathematics relevant to the field of operations research such as continuous optimization, discrete optimizat ...

'' from 1993 to 1998, and is editor-in-chief of ''Operations Research Letters'' since 2002.Faculty profile
CWI, retrieved 2011-11-08. Lenstra became an

INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often s ...

fellow in 2004. In 1997, he was awarded the

EURO Gold Medal The EURO Gold medal of the Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) is the highest distinction within Operations Research (OR) in Europe. The prize was first awarded to Hans-Jürgen Zimmermann in 1985. The medal is awarded a ...

, the highest distinction within

Operations Research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...

in Europe. In 2011, he was made a knight of the

Order of the Netherlands Lion The Order of the Netherlands Lion, also known as the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands (, ) is a Dutch honours system, Dutch order of chivalry founded by William I of the Netherlands on 29 September 1815. The Order of the Netherlands Lion wa ...

, and the CWI organized a symposium in his honor. Lenstra is the brother of

Arjen Lenstra Arjen Klaas Lenstra (born 2 March 1956, in Groningen) is a Dutch mathematician, cryptographer and computational number theorist. He is a professor emeritus from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he headed of the Labora ...

, Andries Lenstra, and

Hendrik Lenstra Hendrik Willem Lenstra Jr. (born 16 April 1949, Zaandam) is a Dutch mathematician. Biography Lenstra received his doctorate from the University of Amsterdam in 1977 and became a professor there in 1978. In 1987, he was appointed to the faculty o ...

, all of whom are also mathematicians. He is married to

Karen Aardal Karen I. Aardal (born 1961) is a Norwegian and Dutch applied mathematician, theoretical computer scientist, and operations researcher. Her research involves combinatorial optimization, integer programming, approximation algorithms, and facility lo ...

, in 2020 professor at

Delft University The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, and natural sciences. It is considered one ...

Publications

Jan Karel Lenstra
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DBLP DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Novem ...

Universität Trier The Trier University (), in the German city of Trier, was founded in 1473. Closed in 1798 by order of the then French Revolutionary Wars, French administration in Trier, the university was re-established in 1970 after a hiatus of some 172 year ...

* Peter J. M. van Laarhoven, Emile H. L. Aarts, Jan Karel Lenstra.
Job Shop Scheduling by Simulated Annealinginfo
//

, , pp. 113-125. * Emile H. L. Aarts, Peter J. M. van Laarhoven, Jan Karel Lenstra, Nico L. J. Ulder: A Computational Study of Local Search Algorithms for Job Shop Scheduling. // INFORMS Journal on Computing 6(2): 118-125 (1994)
dblp

References

Sources

''Album Academicum'' (website University of Amsterdam)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lenstra, Jan Karel 1947 births Living people Dutch mathematicians Dutch operations researchers University of Amsterdam alumni Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology Georgia Tech faculty Knights of the Order of the Netherlands Lion People from Zaanstad Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences