Jacobus Verhoeff

Jacobus Verhoeff, known as Koos, was a Dutch mathematician, computer scientist and artist who worked on error detection and correction and on information retrieval. His doctoral thesis, completed at the Mathematical Centre in Amsterdam in 1969, was titled Error detecting decimal codes. He is best known for the Verhoeff algorithm, a check-digit scheme based on the dihedral group of order 10. He also studied the mathematical aspects of the Dutch administration number for persons, and wrote on the inefficiency of boolean functions for information retrieval systems with W. Goffman and Jack Belzer in 1961. He also held exhibitions of mathematically inspired sculptures. His son, Tom Verhoeff, is also a mathematician and computer scientist.