astronomy

Jan van Leeuwen

Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen rather than just read about it. In short: Jan van Leeuwen (born 17 December 1946 in Waddinxveen) is a Dutch computer scientist and emeritus professor of computer science at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University. Education and career Van Leeuwen completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at Utrecht University in 1967 and received a PhD in mathematics in 1972 from the same institution under the supervision of Dirk…

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Education and career Van Leeuwen completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at Utrecht University 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 and faculty positions at SUNY at Buffalo and the Pennsylvania State University, 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.

Research Jan van Leeuwen contributed to many fields of theoretical computer science, notably to algorithm design and computational complexity theory, 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.

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. In 2008 he received an honorary doctorate from the RWTH Aachen. In 2013 he received the ACM Distinguished Service Award, 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, ISBN 978-0-12-386980-7), a special edition of the collected works of Alan Turing. 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 associate professor in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University.

References

External links Home page, retrieved 01-01-2024 Jan van Leeuwen publications indexed by Google Scholar Jan van Leeuwen at DBLP Bibliography Server

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jan van Leeuwen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen

In research: Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen 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: Jan van Leeuwen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1946 births, Academic staff of Utrecht University, Dutch computer scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jan van Leeuwen in simple terms?

Jan van Leeuwen (born 17 December 1946 in Waddinxveen) is a Dutch computer scientist and emeritus professor of computer science at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University. Education and career Van Leeuwen completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics at Utrec…

Why does Jan van Leeuwen 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 Jan van Leeuwen?

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 Jan van Leeuwen.