Pieter Lodewijk Muller

Pieter Lodewijk Muller (9 November 1842 – 25 December 1904) was a Dutch historian. He published numerous works of history and also contributed nearly two hundred entries to the German Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (German Dictionary of Universal Biography).

Life Muller was born in Koog aan de Zaan (now in Zaanstad), the third son of Christiaan Muller (1813–1896) and Isabella Muller de Cercq (1814–1844). Christiaan Muller was a Mennonite preacher in Koog aan de Zaan and Zaandijk. His mother, who came from a prosperous Dutch family, died when he was only two. The Muller name, written in older documents as Müller, reflected the family's German provenance. Pieter's grandfather, Samuel, and his great uncle, Johannes, had relocated around 1800 from Krefeld to Amsterdam to set up a bookshop. Pieter's uncle, Frederik Muller (1817–1881) had by 1842 taken over the business and became celebrated as an Amsterdam book dealer and publisher. After receiving his doctorate he went to Brussels where he was employed for several months gathering information for the Spanish ambassador. This was followed by a study tour lasting nearly a year which took in Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and Heidelberg. Returning home in April 1869 he settled in Haarlem, to where his father, having remarried, had moved while Pieter was away.

Evaluation Muller's academic contribution was above all to the history of the Netherlands since independence: his various books on the Dutch Golden Age became standard works.