WONDER - Wiskunde Onderzoekschool Nederland - The Dutch Research School in Mathematics


wonder logo

Welcome to WONDER

Welcome to the website of WONDER, the Dutch Research School in Mathematics. We coordinate the national graduate program in mathematics. Our main activity is in training (prospective) PhD students, from a program of honors courses for master and graduate students, through schools, training networks, and the Hans Duistermaat visiting professorship. We also hand out prizes, such as the Stieltjes Prize of the Foundation Compositio, for the best Dutch PhD thesis.

Participating universities: RU, RuG, TUD, TU/e, UL, UT, UU, UvA, UvT, VU

Associated research institutes: Eurandom, CWI

What's in a name?

The name “WONDER” is an abbreviation for the Dutch word “wiskunde onderzoekschool”. “Wiskunde” (“the art of knowing”) is the word that Simon Stevin coined in the 16th century as a dutch equivalent of “Mathematics”. But of course, “WONDER” is also a word in its own, a “feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” WONDER is about experiencing this wonder everyday, in doing, and learning to do, mathematical research.

Our logo is a superposition of a parabola and a hyperbolic cosine; the great Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens discovered that the latter is the correct curve followed by a freely hanging rope, not the former.