Person: Van Lint, Jacobus Hendricus
Jack van Lint was an Indonesian-born Dutch mathematician who worked number theory and also in combinatorics and coding theory.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- The city was undergoing a period of modernisation and it was at the time that Jack began his education in an elementary school in Batavia.
- They settled in Jackson, Mississippi, and Jack continued his education at an elementary school in Jackson.
- Jack's final year of secondary education was spent in the HBS in Zwolle and by the time he graduated in 1950 he was ranked as the best student in the Netherlands, a remarkable achievement for someone who had been forced to attend schools in four continents.
- Van Lint entered Utrecht University in 1950 and there he was strongly influenced by Hans Freudenthal, Jan Popken and Frederik van der Blij.
- Then he spent session 1956-1957 first at the University of Göttingen then at the University of Münster but during this period he was undertaking research for his doctorate with van der Blij as his thesis advisor.
- In the thesis van Lint also studied modular forms of non-integral dimensions that have an Euler product.
- We will discuss his mathematical achievements below, but van Lint was an excellent sportsman, particularly excelling as an outstanding swimmer.
- At Eindhoven the Van Lint Students Sports Week was instigated and also the International Professor van Lint Tournament.
- Van Lint's research following the award of his doctorate continued on a number of distinct paths, one of which was a direct outcome of the work of his thesis.
- In 1982 van Lint published Introduction to coding theory.
- Van Lint continued to publish outstanding texts.
- The next, written jointly with Gerard van der Geer, was Introduction to coding theory and algebraic geometry.
- In 1992 van Lint published his final text (although he went on to produce several later revised editions of his earlier books).
- It was not only as a researcher and expositor that van Lint excelled.
- Among the other honours which van Lint received we mention: elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1972); appointed Knight in the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands (1993); honorary professor Technical University of Bucharest, Romania (1995); honorary doctorate from the University of Bergen, Norway (1996); honorary doctorate from the Technical Unversity of Bucharest (1996); honorary professor Xi'an Jiaotong University, China (1996); Neways Award from Eindhoven (1997); Euler Medal of the Institute of Combinatorics and Applications, Canada (1997); honorary doctorate from the University of Gent, Belgium (2000); and elected honorary member of the Koninklijk Wiskundig Genootschap (Dutch Mathematical Society) (2004).
Born 1 September 1932, Bandoeng, Netherlands East Indies, now Indonesia. Died 28 September 2004, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Indonesia
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
