Gerrit Lekkerkerker

Cornelis Gerrit Lekkerkerker (Harmelen, 7 February 1922 – 24 July 1999) was a Dutch mathematician.

Education and career Lekkerkerker studied mathematics at Utrecht University during the periods 1940-1943 and 1945-1949 under Jurjen Koksma and Jan Popken. After completing his studies in 1949, he started work at the Amsterdam Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science), where he worked under Koksma in the pure mathematics division. In the academic year 1953-1954, he studied in Rome. In 1955 he received his doctorate under the guidance of Popken with the thesis On the Zeros of a Class of Dirichlet-Series; in Dutch: Over de nulpunten in een klasse van Dirichletreeksen.

Beginning in 1961, he was a professor at the University of Amsterdam, succeeding Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn. He was the director of the Mathematical Institute during the student protests of 1969-1973. In 1984, although he had not yet reached retirement age, he resigned his professorship over differences in the teaching of mathematical analysis, feeling that his academic freedom was under threat.

Works 1969: Geometry of Numbers, Noord-Holland, 2nd edition 1987 with Peter M. Gruber, 2008 translated to Russian, Nauka, Moscow 1982: with Hans G. Kaper and J. Hejtmanek, Spectral Methods in Linear Transport Theory, Birkhäuser