Jan van der Horst

Born on August 7, 1944 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands
Counselor at DJOE since 1975, coordinator from 1992
Died on February 24, 2011

Jan, 2003
2003

Initially Jan was primary a chemistry counselor at DJOE. He later extended that to computing science and when Nico was forced to retire from the coordinator role in 1992 he assumed that position. In the later years of the ORDINATOR project he often acted as our day-to-day sounding board and was instrumental in getting this website established.

Jan is currently the "Nestor" of DJOE, a happy grandfather of a fantastic grandchild who will of course join DJOE in due time and is happily shaping up nicely in that direction already. His best memories of DJOE are with the "old" hands; in retrospect the managing of projects like the desert storm film and the ORDINATOR seems much more exciting then it did at the time.

In those times, the punishment for "blowing" a capacitor was to write a report (on paper) of your research on the phenomenon. The fact that everyone tended to stay until well past closing time caused him to introduce his famous closing-time call "HOOGSTE TIJD!" Not that people listened, but still...

Looking back he realizes that DJOE has been very lucky with many of its members. Commitment, enthusiasm and persistence were typical for the young scientists of the time. Nowadays one would cherish such young people in the house because, however sad it may sound, there is no escaping the fact that a different generation is arriving. The Coca Cola youngsters are certainly not less, but very different. Of course, this could be due to himself and the fact that past times always seem rosier then the present; who knows?

At any rate, he wishes every ORD-GROUP to experience those wonderful past times again in the present.

You can find a few personal observations about DJOE in the history of DJOE.

Having overcome leukemia in 2003, Jan died from lung cancer in early 2011. A memorial piece that was read at his cremation can be found in Jan van der Horst, coördinator (in Dutch).