@@Klaas and I have known each other already for more than fifty years. His parents were friends of my uncle and aunt, who lived some 250 meters from my parents’ house. I often used to play with my nephew Leen Kees and thus I met Klaas when his parents were visiting or when he was staying there for a longer time. I lost sight of him until the moment we both started at Philips Research in the Nat. Lab. (the physics lab). He was in electronics, which I detested as a field. I was in chemistry. Our communality was that we lived close to each other, Klaas and Henny, on 50 St. Jorislaan, Annet and I on 54. Most of all we shared that inquisitive, self-willed and analytic mindset, which was so common for young promising researchers in the end of the sixties. Science and technology should prevail where possible. This represented quite a difference from the social engagement of researchers, which took over as a fad in the early seventies. We remained traditional, even in our outfit: grey trousers, white shirt, red necktie, blue blazer. Both of us were seen in that period as being potential right wing suspects. The four of us became friends for life but our career paths went in completely different directions until we met again at Delft University. Klaas became a professor in Industrial Design Engineering in 1991 and I in 1995 - we were even in the same department, and often we shared the same 07.09 AM train from Eindhoven to Delft. Klaas will never become fan of the environment and I still have little affinity for electronics. What I learned from him is to put emphasis on the self-motivation of students, let them find out their own field, let them formulate their graduation assignment themselves and let them develop their designs based on physics. His method is a combination of making the students struggle (mostly with good results, if not, apply some non-humiliating support) and stimulating their self-confidence. Most of all Klaas is a teacher, a real one, a real presenter selling his field and motivating the students. Dutch taxpayers pay 80% of the Delft University budget. Their expectation is primarily that good engineers are educated; Klaas is their best buy both in terms of content and style. ‘Care for students’ also means for Klaas that that you have to be firm and demanding - being popular and soft is not the right idea.
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