Willem Jan Heiser (born 19 January 1949) is a Dutch

social scientist Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the ...

who was Professor of Psychology, Statistical Methods and Data Theory at the

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

between 1989 and 2014.Prof. dr. Willem Heiser
at lumc.nl, 2005. Accessed September 30, 2013

Biography

Heiser was born on 19 January 1949 in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

. He received his PhD in 1981 from the

with a thesis entitled "Unfolding analysis of proximity data" advised by John van de Geer and Jan de Leeuw. In the year 1981-82 he performed

Postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

in New Jersey. Back at the University of Leiden in 1982 he joined the Department of Data Theory, were in April 1989 he was appointed Professor of Psychology & Statistics. Since 2007 he has been Scientific director of the Interuniversity Graduate School for Psychometrics and Sociometrics, and since 2008 also scientific director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Leiden. From 2002 to 2015 he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Classification. Heiser's research interests are in the fields of "multivariate categorical data using multidimensional scaling and classification techniques... advanced clustering and classification methodology for FMRI data." At his farewell speech on 31 January 2014, Heiser was knighted in the

Order of the Dutch Lion The Order of the Netherlands Lion, also known as the Order of the Lion of the Netherlands (, ) is a Dutch order of chivalry founded by William I of the Netherlands on 29 September 1815. The Order of the Netherlands Lion was until recently awar ...

by the mayor of Leiden, Henri Lenferink.

Publications

Heiser has authored and co-authored numerous publications * 1981. ''Unfolding analysis of proximity data''. Doctorate thesis Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. * 1994. ''Models for Asymmetric Proximities''. With Berrie Zielman. * 2001.
SPSS Categories 11.0
'. With

Jacqueline Meulman Jacqueline Meulman (born 7 July 1954) is a Dutch statistician and professor emerita of Applied Statistics at the Mathematical Institute of Leiden University. Biography Born in The Hague, Meulman received her master's degree in mathematical psyc ...

. Chicago: SPSS, 2001. Articles, a selection: * Heiser, Willem J.
Convergent computation by iterative majorization: theory and applications in multidimensional data analysis
" Recent advances in descriptive multivariate analysis (1995): 157-189. * Groenen, Patrick JF, and Willem J. Heiser.
The tunneling method for global optimization in multidimensional scaling
" Psychometrika 61.3 (1996): 529-550. * Meulman, Jacqueline J., Anita J. Van der Kooij, and Willem J. Heiser.
Principal components analysis with nonlinear optimal scaling transformations for ordinal and nominal data
" Handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (2004): 49-70.

References

External links

at Leiden University
Curriculum Vitae
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heiser, Willem J. 1949 births Living people Dutch social scientists Knights of the Order of the Netherlands Lion Leiden University alumni Academic staff of Leiden University Scientists from Rotterdam Psychometrika editors Quantitative psychologists