Pieter Geelen (born 1964) is a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

. Geelen was born in January 1964 in

Hilversum Hilversum () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is ...

as the oldest child of the illustrator

Harrie Geelen Harrie Geelen (born 10 January 1939) is a Dutch illustrator, film director, animator, translator, writer and poet. In 2014, he was made a knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion ("Ridder in de orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw"). He studied Dutch i ...

and the children's author Imme Dros. In 1991, he dropped off his Ph.D. research in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

Universiteit van Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlands still in operati ...

to found a company called ''Palmtop Software'' with his former university mate Peter-Frans Pauwels. This company was later renamed TomTom. With the €100,000,000 he acquired from TomTom's

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 2005, he established the Turing Foundation, a

charitable organization A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, Religion, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definitio ...

. In 2013, he founded the Mapcode Foundation, another

which offers the Mapcode system he invented in 2001 with Harold Goddijn.

References

External links

Turing Foundation websiteMapcode Foundation websiteTomTom website
1964 births Living people 21st-century Dutch businesspeople 21st-century Dutch inventors People from Hilversum {{Netherlands-business-bio-stub