Louis Koopman

The life of Louis Koopman

The life of Louis Jan Koopman holds a wide range of activities. Professionally, he was both a businessman and a scientist, the latter of which grew increasingly dominant. On top of that, he was -  among other things - an art lover and especially an expert of French literature, for which a firm basis had already been established in his early childhood.

He was born in Amsterdam on 9 June 1887. Nothing is known about his father; his mother was a teacher and held a secondary school teaching certificate in French. Besides, the family, which consisted of several children, belonged to the Walloon church. The Koopman children therefore grew up in continuous touch with the French language, first through lessons from their mother, and later thanks to the enthusiasm of the Walloon preacher Étienne Giran, who proved to be an inexhaustible champion of the French language and literature during his time in Amsterdam (from 1900 to 1920). Besides (and after) his regular catechism lessons, the young Koopman followed various other courses. Giran had a great influence on him, as did his successor, Charles le Cornu, who became a dear friend of his.

There is some confusion about Louis Koopman’s education: one might say that this confusion extended throughout his entire life. He must have had his engineering degree already, or at least well on his way to attaining one, when he entered the employ of the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft Düsseldorf in 1909. He left this firm as of 30 September 1913, to become Akquisitions-Ingenieur directly thereafter at Brown, Boveri und Cie, Mannheim.

After World War I erupted, Koopman returned to Amsterdam, where he became the head of the department of consumer sales of the N.V. Elektriciteitsmaatschappij A.E.G., which dealt mostly with medical appliances. He was described as 'an excellent engineer and an outstanding canvasser'. This assessment resulted in his appointment as head of the medical department as of 1 January 1920, and as vice-president of the newly formed subsidiary Metema N.V. after 1922.

Meanwhile, in 1917/1918, he studied at the Rheinisches Technikum Bingen for a semester, after which he graduated on 5 March 1921 from the Elektro-Ingenieur-Schule at the Deutsches Technikum in Berlin. This made him more than qualified for regular membership of the Royal Institute of Engineers in The Hague (July 1923), of which he joined the board of directors after some time as treasurer. After 1927 he interrupted his membership until mid-1933, when he became a member of the 'Department of Electrical Engineering and Technical Physics'.

Meanwhile, Koopman’s longtime speciality had fully crystallised: medical radiology. This is proved by his commercial activities for the company Almara ('General Society for Radiology, Electrology, and Surgery'), based in Amsterdam on the Rokin. It is unclear whether he founded the business, but we do know that he was its president in 1936. He built up a strong profile as a scientist in those years. He participated in conferences in his own country and abroad: Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, as an audience member or as a speaker in the filed of electrocardiography, electro-encephalography and X-ray technology, and he published articles on these subjects in magazines such as Strahlentherapie, British journal of radiology and Archiv für Psychologie und Neurologie. All this undoubtedly contributed to his appointment as officer in the order of Oranje-Nassau by Royal Decision in 1935, nominated by the Minister of Education, Arts and Sciences.

Besides his professional life, which entailed a great deal of travelling both inside the country and abroad, Louis Koopman also found time for other activities, in the first place for the expansion of his book collection. He also collected paintings, with a certain preference for father and son Kasper and Eduard Karsen (the latter of whom was a close friend of his), but also for French painters such as Cavaillès and Raffaelli. He had a lot of contact with artists through his membership as an 'art-loving club member' of the art society Arti et Amicitiae, where he even became a member of the club management committee. In these circles, he probably also met the designers of both bookplates that appear in his collection: Samuel Garf and Félicien Bobeldijk.

Just before the war, his scientific work expanded further. Louis Koopman, then in his early fifties, began to study Mathematics and Physics at the University of Utrecht. During the war years, he prepared himself for the B.Sc. examination, which he passed on 22 October 1945. Koopman soon saw that the Institute of Engineers was heading in the wrong direction, ideologically speaking: he cancelled his membership, and was able to return without a blemish on his record shortly after the war.

Between 1945 and 1949, Koopman was able to combine his daily efforts with work at the department of Medical Physics of the Utrecht university, where he researched cardiac sounds. He obtained his doctoral degree on 15 February 1960, majoring in physics, with mathematics and medical physics as secondary subjects. Medical physics became a subject that continued to fascinate him, and on which he held lectures and published articles. The project 'work and effort' led to his promotion on 1 December 1965 for professor Burger, his dissertation also titled Work and effort.

During the last years of his life, Louis Koopman worked on the realization of a long-cherished plan: a book on his fiancée Anny Antoine. He succeeded in finishing it, in spite of his deteriorating health, but he didn't live to see it published. He died on 3 November 1968.

See also the multi media presentation about Anny Antoine and Louis Koopman.