- Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
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Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica Established 1946 Type National research institute President Prof.dr. J. K. Lenstra Admin. staff ~200 Location Amsterdam, Netherlands Website www.cwi.nl The Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (abbr. CWI; English: National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science) is one of the leading European research centers in the field of mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is located at the Science Park Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
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Early history
The institute was founded in 1946 by Johannes van der Corput, David van Dantzig, Jurjen Koksma, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, Marcel Minnaert and Jan Arnoldus Schouten. It was originally called Mathematical Centre (in Dutch: Mathematisch Centrum). One of the early missions of CWI was to develop mathematical prediction models to assist large Dutch engineering projects, such as the well-known Delta Works. During this early period, the Mathematics Institute also helped with designing the wings of the Fokker F27 Friendship airplane, voted in 2006 as the most beautiful Dutch design of the 20th century.
The computer science component developed soon after. Adriaan van Wijngaarden, considered the founder of computer science (or informatica) in the Netherlands, was the director of the institute for almost 20 years. Edsger Dijkstra did most of his early influential work on algorithms and formal methods at CWI. In 1983, the name of the institute was changed to CWI to reflect the strong computer science component in its research.
Recent research highlights
Today, the institute is internationally known for its work in fields such as operations research (in which CWI has a long tradition), software engineering, information processing, and mathematical applications in life sciences and logistics. More recent examples of research results from CWI include the development of scheduling algorithms for the Dutch railway system, the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (one of the busiest rail networks in the world), or the development of the Python programming language by Guido van Rossum. Python has played an important role in the development of Google search platform from the beginning, and it continues to do so as the system grows and evolves.[1] Also, many of the information retrieval solutions used by packages such as SPSS were initially developed by Data Distilleries, a spinoff of CWI.
Work at the institute is regularly recognized by national or international research awards, such as the Lanchester Prize prize (awarded yearly by INFORMS), the Gödel Prize (awarded by ACM SIGACT) or the Spinoza prize. Most of its senior researchers hold part-time professorships at other Dutch universities, with the institute producing over 170 full professors during the course of its history. Several CWI researchers have been recognized as members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Academia Europaea, or as knights in the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
CWI is a founding member of European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), the European network of national computer science research institutes.
Birthplace of the European Internet
CWI is one of the "birthplaces" of the Internet in Europe. The first connection in Europe to the NSFnet network, which later developed into the current Internet, was established at CWI on 17 November 1988 by Piet Beertema. Cwi.nl was also the first national domain name ever issued anywhere.
Even today, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange (the largest Internet Exchange in the world, in terms of both members and throughput traffic) is located at the neighbouring SARA (an early CWI spin-off) and NIKHEF institutes. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) office for the Benelux countries is located at CWI.
Software and languages developed at or with CWI
- ABC programming language
- Algol 68
- Alma-0, a multi-paradigm computer programming language
- Python programming language
- SMIL
- MonetDB
Notable people
- Hugo Brandt Corstius
- Andries Brouwer
- Edsger Dijkstra
- Richard D. Gill
- Dick Grune
- Kees Koster
- Barry Mailloux
- Lambert Meertens
- Steven Pemberton
- Guido van Rossum
- Alexander Schrijver
- Adriaan van Wijngaarden
External links
References
International member societies European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry • European Society for Mathematical and Theoretical Biology • International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics
National member societies Austria • Belarus • Belgium (Belgian Mathematical Society · Belgian Statistical Society) • Bosnia and Herzegovina • Bulgaria • Croatia • Cyprus • Czech Republic • Denmark • Estonia • Finland • France (Mathematical Society of France · Society of Applied & Industrial Mathematics · Société Francaise de Statistique) • Georgia • Germany • Greece • Hungary • Iceland • Ireland • Israel • Italy (Italian Mathematical Union · Società Italiana di Matematica Applicata e Industriale · The Italian Association of Mathematics applied to Economic and Social Sciences) • Latvia • Lithuania • Luxembourg • Macedonia • Malta • Montenegro • Netherlands • Norway (Norwegian Mathematical Society · Norwegian Statistical Association) • Poland • Portugal • Romania (Romanian Mathematical Society · Romanian Society of Mathematicians) • Russia (Moscow Mathematical Society · St. Petersburg Mathematical Society · Ural Mathematical Society) • Slovakia (Slovak Mathematical Society · Union of Slovak Mathematicians and Physicists) • Slovenia • Spain (Catalan Society of Mathematics · Royal Spanish Mathematical Society · Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research · The Spanish Society of Applied Mathathematics) • Sweden (Swedish Mathematical Society · Swedish Society of Statisticians) • Switzerland • Turkey • Ukraine • United Kingdom (Edinburgh Mathematical Society · Institute of Mathematics and its Applications · London Mathematical Society)
Academic Institutional Members Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics • Academy of Sciences of Moldova • Centre de Recerca Matemàtica • Centre International de Rencontres Mathématiques • Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica • Emmy Noether Research Institute for Mathematics • Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics • European Institute for Statistics, Probability and Operations Research • Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques • Institut Henri Poincaré • Institut Mittag-Leffler • International Centre for Mathematical Sciences • Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences • Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach • Mathematical Research Institute • Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences • Research Institute of Mathematics of the Voronezh State University • Serbian Academy of Science and Arts • Mathematical Society of Serbia • Stefan Banach International Mathematical Center • Thomas Stieltjes Institute for Mathematics
Institutional Members Central European University • Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Barcelona • Cellule MathDoc
Members of ERCIM Austria AARITBelgium Czech Republic CRCIMDenmark DANAIMFinland VTTFrance Germany Fraunhofer-GesellschaftGreece ICS-FORTHHungary SZTAKIIreland Italy Luxembourg FNRNetherlands CWINorway Poland PLERCIMPortugal PEGSpain SparCIMSweden Switzerland SARITUnited Kingdom Categories:- Research institutes in the Netherlands
- Computer science institutes in the Netherlands
- Mathematical institutes
- Members of the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics
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