Alex Verrijn Stuart


Adolf Alexander Verrijn Stuart was a Dutch computer scientist, and the first Professor in computer science at the Leiden University from 1969 tot 1991.

Biography

Alex Verrijn Stuart was born in Rotterdam, where his father was professor in economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His grandfather was the economist Coenraad Alexander Verrijn Stuart, who in 1899 was the first president of the Statistics Netherlands.
Verrijn Stuart received an MA in physics at the Delft University of Technology, and he received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Afterwards he worked at the operations research department of Royal Dutch Shell for 18 years. In 1969 he was appointed the first Professor in computer science in the Netherlands, at the Leiden University. From 1973 to 1974 he had been a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. In 1976 he was one of the founding members of the IFIP TC8 Technical Committee of Information Systems. Among his graduate student were Dewald Roode and Sjaak Brinkkemper.
Alex Verrijn Stuart was also an ice skater and mountaineer. In 1940 he skated his first Elfstedentocht of the five to come. In 1977 he was the leader of an expedition to climb the Annapurna I. In 1982 he was part of an expedition to the Mount Everest that failed.

Publications

Books, a selection: