Koen Lefever

Koen Lefever is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His main research interests are the use of methods from mathematical logic in philosophy of science and the formal axiomatization of scientific theories, in particular theories in physics (classical mechanics and relativity theories).

Dr. Lefever obtained his Bachelor, Master and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The supervisors of his PhD research were prof. dr. Jean Paul Van Bendegem and dr. Gergely Székely.

He is a regular visiting scholar to the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest. His work can be situated in the tradition of the Andréka–Németi School which is inspired by the logical empiricism of the Wiener Kreis, by Alfred Tarski's initiative Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, and by David Hilbert's sixth problem Mathematical Treatment of the Axioms of Physics.

His research is inspired by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' lingua characteristica & calculus ratiocinator.

Koen Lefever has been studying, using and programming computers as a hobbyist since 1975. Since 1994, he works in the information systems industry as consultant, analyst, programmer, Unix & Linux systems administrator, database administrator (on Sybase ASE, PostgreSQL, Oracle & IBM Informix), instructor, and digital electronics designer. He is proficient in a broad range of programming languages, from low level machine code and assembly language, over imperative languages such as C, Fortran, Python, Basic, Pascal/Modula2 and various batch/scripting languages, to declarative languages such as SQL and Prolog.

From 2010 until 2015, he has been teaching History & Philosophy of Science, History of Western Philosophy, Mathematics, Statistics, and Information Systems at Vesalius College Brussels.