13 Facts About Adriaan Fokker

Adriaan Fokker worked in the fields of special relativity and statistical mechanics.

Adriaan Fokker was the inventor of the Fokker organ, a 31-tone equal-tempered organ.

Adriaan Daniel Fokker was born on 17 August 1887 in Buitenzorg, Dutch East Indies, the son of Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker, president of the branch of the Netherlands Trading Society in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, and Susanna Alida der Kinderen.

Adriaan Fokker was a cousin of the aeronautical engineer Anthony Fokker.

Adriaan Fokker continued his studies with Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford and William Bragg.

Adriaan Fokker became a physics teacher at the Gymnasium of Delft after 1918 and was appointed in 1923 as the first professor of Applied Physics at the Technische Hoogeschool Delft.

In 1928 Adriaan Fokker succeeded Hendrik Lorentz as director of research at Teylers Museum in Haarlem.

Adriaan Fokker made several contributions to special relativity, and some less well-known contributions to general relativity, particularly in the area of geodetic precession, the phenomena of precession of a freely falling gyroscope in a gravitational field.

Adriaan Fokker began to study music theory during the Second World War, when the University of Leiden was closed; partly this was due to a desire to convince the Nazis he would be of no use to the war effort, and partly it was a response to reading the work of Christiaan Huygens on the 31 equal temperament.

Adriaan Fokker made notable contributions to music theory, such as the Fokker periodicity block.

Adriaan Fokker died on 24 September 1972, at the age of 85, in Beekbergen near Apeldoorn.

Adriaan Fokker designed and had built a number of keyboard instruments capable of playing microtonal scales via a generalized keyboard.

The Adriaan Fokker organ is currently property of the Huygens-Adriaan Fokker Foundation and it moved to the Bamzaal in Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ.