CWI celebrates 70th birthday

On 11 February 2016 Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) celebrates its 70th anniversary.

Publication date
11 Feb 2016

On 11 February 2016 Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) celebrates its 70th anniversary.

The past decades brought great successes for CWI. The institute built the first Dutch computer, calculated dike heigths for the Delta Works, developed programming languages such as Algol-60 and Python, made the first public European Internet connection and registered .nl domain names for many years, of which cwi.nl was the first. The institute has developed into a renowned and diverse research institute, with expertise ranging from cryptology and software engineering to optimization and quantum computing. CWI also founded 22 spin-off companies.

The institute, at the time called Mathematisch Centrum, was founded on 11 February 1946, to help rebuilding the Netherlands after World War II. Its mission is still the same: to conduct pioneering research in mathematics (and later also computer science), and conveying this to society.

CWI celebrates its anniversary with festivities for its personnel.