My name is Martijn Dekker. I was born in 1969 in the Netherlands. After highschool, I went to the University of Utrecht to study mathematics. I graduated cum laude in 1993 and I proceeded at the University of Amsterdam to get my PhD in 1997 on a topic in algebraic geometry. I decided to leave university and have since then worked in the financial services industry. Currently I am working as managing director (executive vice president) in the financial services industry.

I live in a small village in the Netherlands, where one can actually see the milky way, which is quite special in the Netherlands. As the backyard has plenty of space, it was a perfect place to build my observatory.

Science has always been my main interest. In my spare time I have been reading and doing science after leaving university. I co-authored a paper about topology of chromosomes with my twin brother, which was published in Science (2002). And I restarted a hobby which I abandoned when I was 18: astronomy.
Since 2012, I am, next to my job at the bank, (parttime) associate professor Information Risk Management at the University of Tilburg. I love science!

When I left astronomy as a hobby, I did so because my main interest shifted to mathematics. Furthermore, there was not that much more to discover: I owned an 80mm home built refractor on a shaky mount, and I had seen all that was to be seen with that scope. But things have changed dramatically with technology progressing, and nowadays amateur astronomy is a completely different ballgame: computerised go-to telescopes and CCD cameras enable amateurs to reach further and further into the universe. Therefore, in august 2003, I restarted this hobby.