Willem van der Poel


Willem Louis van der Poel is a pioneering Dutch computer scientist, who is known for designing the ZEBRA computer.

Biography

In 1950 Van der Poel obtained an engineering degree in applied science at Delft University of Technology, and in 1956 obtained his PhD degree from the University of Amsterdam. The title of his PhD thesis was The Logical Principles of Some Simple Computers.
From 1950 until 1967 he worked for the Dutch PTT, and from 1962 till 1988 was professor at Delft University of Technology. One of his PhD students was Gerard J. Holzmann. He was also the first chairman of IFIP Working Group 2.1 on ALGOL, from 1962 to 1968.
Van der Poel was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971. In 1960 he received, together with H. Mol, the Visser-Neerlandia prize for the construction of a Braille translator.

Work

Van der Poel is primarily known as a Dutch computer pioneer, designer of Testudo, the PTERA, the ZERO, and the ZEBRA computer. He
chaired the IFIP working group WG2.1, which designed Algol 68, and contributed to Algol 68 and LISP for the ZEBRA. He is said to be the originator of the Zero One Infinity rule, which suggests that software designs should not impose arbitrary limits on the number of instances of a particular entity: if more than a single instance of it is to be allowed, then the collection size should be without fixed limit.

Selected publications

Books