Hester Bijl
Dutch mathematician, professor

Hester Bijl is a Dutch mathematician and since 15 January 2026 the rector magnificus of Delft University of Technology. From 2021 until 2026 she was the rector magnificus of Leiden University.
Life and career
Bijl received a PhD from the Delft University of Technology, along with a master's degree from Leiden University.
In 1999, she started working the Delft University of Technology in the aerodynamics department. In 2013, she became dean of the faculty of aerospace engineering at the Delft University of Technology. In 2021, Bijl was appointed rector magnificus of Leiden University, succeeding Carel Stolker. In 2024, she was reappointed. She is the first female rector of the university.
Bijl is on the supervisory board of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research and on the board of the Leiden Bio Science Park. She has been a visiting researcher at the NASA Langley Research Center.
The public source identifies “Hester Bijl” as dutch mathematician, professor. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hester, Bijl and Dutch.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59096960. VIAF identifies the subject as 286333533. The Library of Congress control number is nb2013023407. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2021, 1999 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hester Bijl” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.