Jan van Neerven
columnist
Jan van Neerven is an Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Professor of Mathematics at the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics (EWI), where he heads the Analysis section. He is the author of several books in his field, received a Vidi and Vici grant from NWO, and is editor-in-chief of Indagationes Mathematicae. In 2024 he was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jan van Neerven observes that an old mathematical debate is mirroring the current discussion on the creativity of machines. While mathematicians believe that AI will never really be creative, neuroscientists believe that it is a question of training.
Now that a UN committee has decided that there is genocide in Gaza, it looks like suspending Israel from academic partnerships is inevitable, says Jan van Neerven. Still, it is also important to keep the path open for reconciliation and dialogue.
In mathematics, it is not always easy to check whether results are really correct. With the emergence of AI, this could change, writes Jan van Neerven.
Academic freedom is under pressure, columnist Jan van Neerven observes. He too believes it is time for the Constitution to be revised.
Jan van Neerven visits a primary school every year to explain to children why science is so wonderful. With looming budget cuts to higher education, he is making an extra effort this year.
For columnist Jan van Neerven, it’s clear: the Executive Board and the outgoing Chair of the Supervisory Board at TU Delft are paving the way for future collaboration in the development of the Rotterdam campus.
Columnist Jan van Neerven believes that more attention should be paid to the link between social safety and gender diversity in leadership positions. With dismay, he observes that the Delft Technology Fellowship programme has been discontinued due to budget cuts. “At a time when vision and decisiveness are needed, the Executive Board is turning back the clock.”
Columnist Jan van Neerven believes that replacing the entire Executive Board offers opportunities. It worries him that the current Supervisory Board will appoint a new Board. It is time to start with a clean slate.
At the end of a tumultuous year, columnist Jan van Neerven finds inspiration in a conductor who returns to his homeland to build something new.
Columnist Jan van Neerven hopes that it will not stop at protests against the severe cuts in education, but that action will also be taken through the courts. In the meantime, mathematics offers him a precious commodity: consensus on what is truth.
Columnist Jan van Neerven is a proponent of English-language education at TU Delft. He already had issues with certain aspects of the proposed political Bill, which aims to better manage the influx of international students. And now, the recent additional measures to tighten that law go too far in his view.
Columnist Jan van Neerven read with approval that the rector has changed his stance on social safety. However, he has a few reservations.
The only concrete actions in the Plan for Change for social safety at TU Delft are preventative, communicative, and therapeutic in nature, observes columnist Jan van Neerven. He saw alternatives at a university abroad.
Columnist Jan van Neerven champions press freedom in his first column for Delta. His inspiration comes from his father, who passionately defended this cause as Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Limburgs Dagblad’.
In this letter to the editor, Mathematics Professor Jan van Neerven takes up columnist Bob van Vliet’s hashtag #NotMyExecutiveBoard. He wonders whether the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board will live up to their own words.
