Famous Belgian Intellectuals & Academics

Flemish cartographer of the 16th century, Abraham Ortelius is remembered as the person who created Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the world’s first modern atlas. Starting his career as an engraver, he later switched to map-making. He also served as Spanish king Philip II’s official geographer and proposed the idea of continental drift.

Moroccan-born scientist Moncef Slaoui completed his doctoral studies in Belgium and the moved to the US for further research at Harvard. In his career of almost 3 decades at GlaxoSmithKline, he oversaw the development of many vaccines. He later headed Operation Warp Speed, the US government’s initiative to develop COVID-19 vaccines.

Son of a shoemaker, Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator was initially supposed to be a priest. His 1569 world map paved the path for the Mercator projection, which helped people ascertain the exact ratio of latitude and longitude of a particular place. He also coined the term “atlas.”

Belgian politician and former prime minister of Belgium Herman Van Rompuy has also served as the President of the European Council. Initially an economist at the National Bank of Belgium, he later joined the Christian Democratic Party and eventually led it as its president. He has also been the Belgian budget minister.

One of the most prominent scholars of the Middle Ages, Belgian historian Henri Pirenne had started his career as a professor at the University of Ghent. The Francqui Prize winner was imprisoned by the Germans during their occupation of Belgium and penned A History of Europe while in prison.

Belgian-born American literary critic Paul de Man was considered one of the 2 pioneering figures of deconstruction, the other being French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Known for his criticism of authorial intentionalism, he also had a controversial personal life and once lived with a woman and her husband in a consensual relationship.

Belgian political theorist and author Chantal Mouffe has also been a professor at the University of Westminster and been a visiting faculty at various prestigious institutes, such as Harvard and Cornell. She is known for her prominent criticism of the idea of deliberative democracy and belongs to the post-Marxist school of contemporary philosophy.

Ernest Mandel was a Belgian Trotskyist activist and theorist, Marxian economist, and Holocaust survivor. During the German occupation of Belgium, Mandel fought against the Nazis in the underground resistance. He served as an editor of Het Vrije Woord, an underground newspaper during the Second World War. During his life, Mandel published some 30 books and 2,000 articles in various languages.

Flemish author Koenraad Elst, who calls himself a “secular humanist,” joined the Banaras Hindu University for his research on Hindu revivalism, after spending his initial years as a hippie. He is known for promoting the Out of India theory, which states the ancient Aryans had originated from the Indian subcontinent.

Bart De Wever is a Belgian politician who has been serving as the leader of the nationalist and conservative political party, New Flemish Alliance, since 2004. In 2007, he played an important role in the Belgian government formation. Since 2013, Bart De Wever has also been serving as the Mayor of Antwerp.  

Belgian-born American Conservative Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand had also been a professor at Hunter College for almost 4 decades. She was often critical of gay rights and abortion rights. Though discriminated against in her early career for being a woman, she later criticized feminism, too, and stressed on femininity.

Belgian scholar Justus Lipsius chaired history and philosophy at the University of Jena and was later associated with the universities of Leiden and Leuven. His works mostly revolved around the revival of Stoicism, which led to the Neostoicism movement. His best-known works include De constantia and Politicorum libri sex.

The second son of Charles-Guillaume of the Belgian noble House of Merode, Emmanuel de Merode is a conservationist, an anthropologist, and a pilot. He has also led Congo’s Virunga National Park as its director and has worked for the conservation of mountain gorillas and for the control of the bushmeat trade in Africa.

Belgian author and lawyer Paul Otlet went down in history as the man predicted the emergence of the internet as a world-wide information network over 50 years before its arrival. He also laid down the Universal Decimal Classification and penned the iconic book Traité de Documentation.

Fernand Khnopff was a Belgian painter whose works gained him recognition and helped achieve a cult status during his lifetime. He was honored with the prestigious Order of Leopold for his immense contribution to Symbolism.

Belgian Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx was part of the Dominican Order and taught at the Catholic University of Nijmegen. Through his writings, he challenged the age-old religious beliefs such as virgin birth and resurrection, and thus angered the Vatican. The Erasmus Prize winner was a professor of dogmatic theology, too.

Belgian political philosopher and political economist Philippe Van Parijs is known for his support of the idea of unconditional basic income. He is a professor at the University of Louvain and has also been associated with Harvard and Oxford’s Nuffield College. He has also defended concepts such as real freedom and language tax.

Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers whose research interests include history of science and philosophy of science is noted for her work in the latter. She has written extensively on history of science as also on philosophers like Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze. Notable books of Stengers include the ones co-authored with Ilya Prigogine on chaos theory like Order out of Chaos.

Godfried Danneels was a Belgian cardinal who worked for the Roman Catholic Church. From 1979 to 2010, he served as the chairman of the episcopal conference of Belgium and the Metropolitan Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. As primate of Belgium, Godfried Danneels officiated at several Royal baptisms, funerals, and marriages at the royal court.

Chaïm Perelman was a Polish-born philosopher of law who spent most of his life in Brussels, Belgium. He is counted amongst the most important argumentation theorists of the 20th century. He studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and was appointed a lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the same institute. He was married to Fela Perelman. 

Belgian Roman Catholic cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier was a prominent Thomist scholar who was largely responsible for the revival of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 19th century. He served as the Archbishop of Mechelen and is remembered for his valiant resistance to the 1914–1918 German occupation.

Born to a Polish father and a Belgian mother in Paris, anthropologist and academic Eliane Karp later studied in Jerusalem, before moving to Stanford. The wife of former president of Peru Alejandro Toledo, she was dragged out of court, while cursing, after Toledo was denied bail in a bribery case.

Arnold Geulincx was a Flemish philosopher, logician, and metaphysician. Over the years, Geulincx's works like De virtute and Methodus inveniendi argumenta have influenced other prominent personalities like Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett, who cites Arnold Geulincx as a key influence.

Hungarian banker and economist Alexandre Lamfalussy was not just an Oxford doctorate but had also taught at institutes such as Yale. He was also associated with the Bank for International Settlements and was the Frankfurt-based European Monetary Institute’s first president. He had also been a BIS economic advisor.

Camille Gutt was a Belgian politician, economist, and industrialist. He is best remembered for designing a monetary reform plan that helped recover the Belgian economy post World War II. Camille Gutt also played an important role in the development of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), serving as its first Managing Director from 1946 to 1951.

One of the most prominent figures of Belgian politics, Philippe Moureaux also taught economic history at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. A Socialist Party politician, he had been the minister of the interior, the minister of justice, and the Minister-President of the French Community. He received a Belgian knighthood, among other honors.

Dutch poet Philips of Marnix is best remembered for his translation of the Psalms. He managed to anger the Roman Catholics with his works such as The Beehive of the Roman Catholic Church and thus spent a year as a prisoner. It’s believed that he wrote the Dutch national anthem, Wilhelmus van Nassouwe.

José Comblin was a theologian. He has a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Leuven. He worked as an advisor to the Young Catholic Workers and was a professor at the Dominican Theological School in São Paulo. He played a major role in the creation of rural seminaries in Pernambuco and Paraíba. He authored around 65 books. 

Jef van de Wiele was a Belgian Flemish politician who gained notoriety as the leader of a pro-Nazi wing during the Nazi occupation of Belgium. A staunch supporter of Adolf Hitler, Van de Wiele co-founded and edited a magazine named Nieuw Vlaanderen, which spread and promoted Nazism during the Second World War.

William of Moerbeke was a translator best remembered for translating important scientific, medical, and philosophical written materials from Greek to Latin. He is credited with translating some of Aristotle's works, including Politics. William of Moerbeke's translations were influential and his works are still revered by modern scholars.