OPTEC - KU Leuven Center of Excellence: Optimization in Engineering

The 'Simon Stevin Lecture Series on Optimization in Engineering' is set up in order to promote optimization in engineering. For this aim, every quarter of the year an outstanding international scholar is invited to report on latest progress in the development of optimization algorithms and their applications in engineering. Simon Stevin (1548-1620) was a Flemish mathematician and engineer. Among other, he helped to advance the use of decimal fractions, was the first to explain the tides by the attraction of the moon, and discovered the hydrostatic paradox. He made numerous inventions, among them a wind propelled carriage with sails, the 'land yacht', which once impressed Prince Maurice of Orange as it moved faster than horses, in around 1600 on the beach between Scheveningen and Petten. Simon Stevin was fond of promoting the use of science in daily life and in craftmanship, and translated various mathematical terms into dutch. Among other, he introduced the dutch word for mathematics, 'wiskunde'.