Thijs van der Hulst knighted by the Queen

On Friday April 29th Her Majesty Queen Beatrix has honored Thijs van der Hulst with a royal distinction. He has been appointed Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. Thijs van der Hulst has a major reputation as an astronomy researcher in the global radio astronomy field and has contributed much to the positioning of the Netherlands in that field. He was chair of the board of the NWO Foundation ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, which aims to stimulate astronomy within and outside the Netherlands via the development of observation equipment for astronomers. In that capacity Van der Hulst was responsible for the exploitation and expansion of the radio observatories at Dwingeloo and Westerbork, particularly in the period when the scientifically very advanced radio telescope LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) was conceived.