Education
In 1970, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy on the subject of computational linguistics.
columnist journalist linguist writer computer scientist
In 1970, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy on the subject of computational linguistics.
He was employed at the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam. However, to the general public he is mostly known for his writing, in particular as a columnist for Vrij Nederland and de Volkskrant and as linguist and literary critic for Vrij Nederland, de Volkskrant, and National Research Council Handelsblad. Hugo Brandt Corstius wrote under over sixty different pseudonyms, allonyms and aliases.
He claimed each them to be a component of his character.
In Vrij Nederland he used the pseudonym Piet Grijs and between 1979 and 1986 in de Volkskrant he used the pseudonym Stoker. His other pseudonyms include Battus (in National Research Council Handelsblad and Vrij Nederland), Raoul Chapkis, Victor Baarn, Dolf Cohen, Maaike Helder, Peter Malenkov and Talisman.
The Battus name was reserved for writing on linguistics and language play, in columns, articles and books Many forms of word play (palindromes, the longest attested word in Dutch, e-less Dutch, etc etc) were bundled in the volume Opperlandse taal- & letterkunde, ("Upperlandic linguistics", where "Upperlandic" is word play on "Netherlandic"), and twenty years later a sequel Opperlans! (deliberate misspelling).
Both books are concerned with the form of Dutch words with little regard to meaning.
He also wrote De Encyclopedie, a book parodying encyclopedias, containing about 300 pages numbered 1 through 40000 or thereabouts, with many puns, references to non-existent pages and other jokes. 1966 - Anne Frank Prize for Ik sta op mijn hoofd C.