Wim Ebbinkhuijsen
Wim Ebbinkhuijsen (born 24 December 1939, Amsterdam) is a retired Dutch computer scientist who is considered one of the "fathers of Cobol".
in 1979 he founded the international ISO COBOL working group. From 1967 he was a member, and from 1978 until 2003 he was the chairman of the Dutch COBOL Commission ("Nederlandse COBOL Commissie"). From 1998 until 2001 he was a member of the NCITS/ANSI COBOL commission X3J4 and in that position he designed or re-wrote dozens parts of the current COBOL standard.
As member and chairman of the examining-board T2-Cobol Ebbinkhuijsen was active for a number of years with Exin (EXamenINstituut, "Dutch examination Institute") . He also wrote the course-books for this exam.
On October 22, 2004 after 42 years Ebbinghuijsen left the Cobol world, with a valedictory symposium in the auditorium of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. For his enormous contribution to COBOL he received an IEEE award, as well as the Dutch royal distinction, Knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau (Ridder in de Orde van Oranje Nassau).