{"id":134698,"date":"2022-01-13T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T12:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=134698"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:26:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:26:04","slug":"surprised-and-delighted-reactions-to-the-appointment-of-robbert-dijkgraaf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2022\/01\/13\/surprised-and-delighted-reactions-to-the-appointment-of-robbert-dijkgraaf\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprised and delighted: reactions to the appointment of Robbert Dijkgraaf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dijkgraaf, 61, is best known to the general public as the physicist who gave entertaining and accessible lectures in the talk show De Wereld Draait Door<\/em>. For eighteen years he also wrote columns for the Dutch national newspaper NRC Handelsblad<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Spinoza laureate Robbert Dijkgraaf will become Minister of Education, Culture and Science on behalf of D66.<\/span><\/p>

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He obtained his doctorate cum laude<\/em> under the supervision of Nobel Prize winner Gerard \u2019t Hooft in 1989, and later became a top scientist. He was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, and was president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. For the last ten years he has been the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where Albert Einstein once worked.<\/p>\n

He made high-profile criticisms<\/a> of the former government, which he accused of\u00a0 \u2018budget-neutral small-mindedness\u2019 when it shifted research funding from social sciences and humanities to the exact sciences and technology. \u201cHave you ever given a present to a child by grabbing it from another one? Have fun with that!\u201d<\/p>\n

In the new government Dijkgraaf doesn\u2019t only have responsibility for higher education and research, but also for vocational education<\/a>. His predecessor Ingrid van Engelshoven also had culture under her responsibility, but there will now be a secretary of state for that.<\/p>\n\n\t

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