is university professor of mathematical physics at the University of Amsterdam. He received a cum laude PhD in 1989 with Nobel Prize winner Gerard ’t Hooft as his advisor. Afterwards, he was a researcher at Princeton University. In 2003, he was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the most important Dutch scholarly award, for his work on string theory. Dijkgraaf is president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, and a member of the Duth government’s Innovation Platform for research and education. In his columns for leading newspaper NRC Handelsblad, partly published in the essay collection Blikwisselingen (Exchanging views, 2008), he attempts to bridge the gap between science, art, politics, and education.