Background
Kuiper, Nicolaas Hendrik was born on June 28, 1920 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Son of Nicolaas Hendrik (Koos) and Martha (Kolle) Kuiper.
Kuiper, Nicolaas Hendrik was born on June 28, 1920 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Son of Nicolaas Hendrik (Koos) and Martha (Kolle) Kuiper.
Kuiper completed his Doctor of Philosophy in differential geometry from the University of Leiden in 1946 under the supervision of Willem van der Woude.
Nicolaas contributed to the Nash embedding theorem in the 1950s. He came to the United States, first at the Institute for Advanced Study (1947-1949), where he met Shining-Shen Chern, which later proved crucial for his mathematical studies, and in 1954 at the University of Michigan where he met Raoul Bott and his student Steve Smale. In 1950 he was appointed professor of mathematics and statistics at Wageningen Agricultural University, and in 1962 he was appointed professor of pure mathematics at the University of Amsterdam.
Nicolaas served as director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques from 1971 until his retirement 1985. After his retirement, he remained in France as a permanent member of het IHES until 1991, when he returned to live in the Netherlands. He continued to participate in mathematical colloquia at the University of Utrecht.
Married Agnete Kramers, June 4, 1947. Children: Pieter Nicolaas, Anna Suzanne, Niels Jacob.
1881-1948
