Person: Cohen, Wim

Wim Cohen was a Dutch mathematician who worked in queueing theory and statistics.

His parents were Benjamin Cohen and Aaltje Klein.
By this time Cohen was sixteen years old and was in the middle of his high school education.
In order for her not to know that they were hiding a Jew, Wim had to hide in a hole between the floors in complete darkness, laying there motionless.
After the defeat of the Germans, Cohen was able to continue with his education.
Although his doctorate was in mechanics, Cohen's work with Philips took a rather different route since they had become involved in telephone engineering at the time Cohen entered the Company.
In 1957 Cohen left the Philips Telecommunication Group and accepted an appointment as a Full Professor of Pure and Applied Mathematics and Mechanics in Delft University of Technology.
Later papers during this period include Derived Markov chains (1962) and Applications of derived Markov chains in queueing theory (1963) and in these and other appers Cohen made deep studies of stochastic processes and queueing theory.
In 1973 Cohen left Delft when he took up an appointment on 1 September as the Chair of Operations Research in the Mathematical Institute of the University of Utrecht.
Cohen continued to hold the Chair of Operations Research until he retired in 1988.
Cohen received many honours for his outstanding scientific achievements.

Born 27 August 1923, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. Died 12 November 2000, Den Haag, The Netherlands.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Netherlands

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive