astronomy

Henkjan Honing

Henkjan Honing is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Henkjan Honing rather than just read about it. In short: Henkjan Honing (born 1959 in Hilversum) is a Dutch researcher. He is professor emeritus of Music Cognition at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam.

Key takeaways

Henkjan Honing belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Henkjan Honing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Henkjan Honing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Henkjan Honing (born 1959 in Hilversum) is a Dutch researcher. He is professor emeritus of Music Cognition at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam. He conducts his research under the auspices of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, and the University of Amsterdam's Brain and Cognition center.

Early life and education Honing obtained his PhD at City University (London) in 1991 with research into the representation of time and temporal structure in music. During the period between 1992 and 1997, he worked as a KNAW Research Fellow (Academieonderzoeker) at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, where he conducted a study on the formalization of musical knowledge. Up until 2003, he worked as a research coordinator at the Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information (now F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging) where he specialized in the computational modeling of music cognition.

Career In 2007, he was appointed Associate Professor in Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam's Musicology capacity group. In 2010 he was awarded the KNAW-Hendrik Muller chair, designated on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 he was appointed strategic Professor of Cognitive and Computational Musicology, and in 2014 he became full professor in Music Cognition at both the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam. In 2013 he received a Distinguished Lorentz Fellowship, a prize granted by the Lorentz Center for the Sciences and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2019 Honing was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2024 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC). In 2025 he was elected member of the Academia Europaea.

Research Henkjan Honing authored over 300 scientific publications in the areas of music cognition, musicality and music technology, and published several books for a general audience, including Iedereen is muzikaal. Wat we weten over het luisteren naar muziek (Nieuw Amsterdam, 2009/2012), published in English as Music Cognition: The Basics (Routledge, 2021), and Aap slaat maat. Op zoek naar de oorsprong van muzikaliteit bij mens en dier (Nieuw Amsterdam, 2018) that appeared in English as The Evolving Animal Orchestra: In Search of What Makes Us Musical (2019, The MIT Press). In 2018 a research agenda on the topic of musicality appeared as The Origins of Musicality (2018, The MIT Press).

Personal life Henkjan is the older brother of drummer Bill Honing and saxophonist Yuri Honing.

Selected studies Honing, H. (2021). Music Cognition: The Basics. Routledge. ISBN 9780367745004. Honing, H. (2019). The Evolving Animal Orchestra. In Search of What Makes Us Musical. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262039321. Honing, H. (2018). The Origins of musicality. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262037457. Honing, H.; ten Cate, C.; Peretz, I.; Trehub, S. (2015). "Without it no music: Cognition, biology, and evolution of musicality". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 370 (1664): 1664. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0088. PMC 4321129. PMID 25646511. Complete list of publications

References

External links Official website Music Cognition Group (MCG) at the University of Amsterdam

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Henkjan Honing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Henkjan Honing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Henkjan Honing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Henkjan Honing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Henkjan Honing

In research: Henkjan Honing appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Henkjan Honing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Henkjan Honing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1959 births, Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam, Academics of City, University of London, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Henkjan Honing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Henkjan Honing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Henkjan Honing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Henkjan Honing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Henkjan Honing in simple terms?

Henkjan Honing (born 1959 in Hilversum) is a Dutch researcher. He is professor emeritus of Music Cognition at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam.

Why does Henkjan Honing matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Henkjan Honing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Henkjan Honing.