Famous Dutch scientists

[Stríbog]

Holland, despite its small geographic size, has produced probably more scientists per capita than any European country except possibly England and Germany. Some famous Dutch minds:

Anton van Leeuwenhoek - first true microbiologist

Christian Huygens - astronomer, discovered rings of Saturn

Jacobus Kapteyn - astronomer, determined structure of this galaxy

Jan Oort - astronomer, proposed theory of comet origins

Maarten Schmidt - astronomer, identified red-shift lines from quasars

Willem de Sitter - developed the model of the expanding universe which complemented relativity theory

Willebrod Snell - physicist, determined basics of light refraction

Johannes van der Waals - physicist who quantified non-ideal behavior of gases and studied phase changes. Nobel laureate

Hendrik Lorentz - physicist who advanced Lorentz transformations, relativistic changes in mass; lay foundations for relativity theory. Nobel laureate

Heike Kammerlingh Onnes - liquified helium; discovered its superfluid properties; discovered superconductivity. Nobel laureate

Pieter Zeeman - discovered spectral line splitting in strong magnetic field. Nobel laureate

Peter Debye - solid-state physicist, contributed to molecular theory. Nobel laureate

Frits Zernike - invented phase-contrast microscope

Nicolas Bloembergen - developed laser spectroscopy. Nobel laureate

Simon van der Meer - discovered particles that carry weak nuclear interaction. Nobel laureate

Gerhard Hoof't - quantum physicist, worked on black hole theory and quantum mechanics. Nobel laureate

George Uhlenbeck - helped discover electron spin. Nobel laureate

Jacobus Van't Hoff - organic chemist, studied optical isomer behavior. Nobel laureate

Paul Crutzen, atmospheric chemist, Nobel laureate

There are some I'm probably forgetting but I can't think of them right now...

I found these links helpful:
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff...utchastro.html
http://cnr2.kent.edu/~manley/physicists.html

[Krampus]

Dr. Edsger Dijkstra famous pioneer computer scientist, anyone who's ever taken a computer science course would be familiar with this guy. He actually died last year of cancer. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/
Of course he looks like he might have some BRUNN in him! Whatever sub racial category he belongs to, a very intelligent man without who's work we might not be posting here today.