Famous People with Name Pieter

Pieter Willem Botha            Origin/Culture/Country: African

Pieter Willem Botha: commonly known as "P. W." and Die Groot Krokodil (Afrikaans for "The Big Crocodile"), was the prime minister of South Africa from 1978 to 1984 and the first executive state president from 1984 to 1989. Botha was a long-time leader of South Africa's National Party and a staunch advocate of the apartheid system. While in power he made some small concessions towards human rights, but he upheld apartheid. He refused to testify at the new government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was fined and given a suspended jail sentence for his refusal to testify in relation to human rights violations.

Pieter Huistra            Origin/Culture/Country: Dutch

Pieter Huistra: a former Dutch footballer.Between 1990 and 1994 he played for Scottish Premier Division club Rangers, becoming the first of a number of Dutch players to play for the club, where he won five League medals, two League Cup medals and a Scottish Cup medal. He left Rangers to play for Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the J. League.

Pieter Theodorus Oosterhoff            Origin/Culture/Country: Dutch

Pieter Theodorus Oosterhoff: was a Dutch astronomer.He was the co-administrator, along with Jan Oort, of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands.He published papers were primarily in regard to variable stars and photometry. He is most noted for observing in 1939 that there appear to be two populations of globular clusters based on the periodicities of their RR Lyrae variable stars.[1] These two populations would come to be known as Oosterhoff groups after him.Between 1951 and 1952 he served as assistant general secretary of the International Astronomical Union, and served as general secretary from 1952 until 1958. In 1954 he was one of twelve European astronomers who drafted a statement that would lead to the formation of the ESO.

Pieter Bleeker            Origin/Culture/Country: Dutch

Pieter Bleeker: was a Dutch medical doctor and ichthyologist, famous for his work on the fishes of East Asia.He was employed as a medical officer in the Dutch East Indian Army from 1842 to 1860, stationed in Indonesia. During that time, he did most of his ichthyology work, besides his duties in the army. Many of his specimen he got from local fishermen, but he also built up an extended network of contacts who would send him specimen from various government outposts throughout the islands.During his time in Indonesia, he collected well over 12000 specimen, many of which are today at the Natural History Museum in Leiden.

Pieter Boddaert            Origin/Culture/Country: Dutch

Pieter Boddaert: was a Dutch physician and naturalist.Boddaert was the son of a Middelburg jurist and poet by the same name (1694-1760). Pieter Jr obtained his M.D. at the University of Utrecht in 1764 and there became a lecturer on natural history. Fourteen letters survive of his correspondence with Carl Linnaeus between 1768 and 1775 [2]. He was a friend of Albert Schlosser, who's cabinet of "curiosities" (natural history objects) he described. In 1783 he published fifty copies of an identification key of Edmé-Louis Daubenton's Planches enluminees, assigning scientific names to the plates. As many of these were the first scientific names to be proposed they remain in use.