Jan van Bemmel

Jan Hendrik van Bemmel (born 17 November 1938) is a Dutch former professor of medical informatics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He was rector magnificus of the Erasmus University Rotterdam between 2000 and 2003.

Career Van Bemmel was born in Rotterdam on 17 November 1938. He studied physics at Delft University of Technology, where he obtained a degree in 1963. He subsequently started working for the Medical-Physical Institute of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). At the institute he was head of the workgroup of biomedical signalanalysis. Six years later he earned his Doctor title at the faculty of physics and mathematics of the Radboud University Nijmegen.

In 1973 Van Bemmel stopped working for TNO and was appointed as professor of medical informatics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 1987 Van Bemmel became professor of medical informatics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He served as rector magnificus of the University between 2000 and 2003. He served as president of the International Medical Informatics Association from 1998 to 2001. He became a corresponding member of the National Academy of Medicine in 1991. In 2018 a paper in honour of his 80th birthday was published in which Van Bemmel's earlier work was held to the then current scientific state of knowledge.

In 2017 Van Bemmel published a book named "Waar was je? Geloven na Darwin en Hubble", describing his views on Christian beliefs and evolution theory.