DSPE appoints Martin van den Brink as an honorary member
Upon his retirement from ASML, Martin van den Brink was appointed honorary member of DSPE.
Van den Brink joined ASML as an engineer in 1984, the year the Philips spin-out company was founded, and is now stepping down as co-president and chief technology officer. He is considered the godfather of the technological success of the lithography machine builder, says DSPE president Hans Krikhaar, explaining Van den Brink’s honorary membership. “Precision engineering, the field of work of our society, is an important pillar of that success. Without extremely accurate movement and positioning, ASML machines would not be able to deliver their impressive performance.”
Van den Brink and DSPE have had a close relationship for many years. For example, in 2012, the Martin van den Brink Award was established, partly at the initiative of DSPE. The aim was to underline the importance of system architecture: developing the design for a complex machine at a high level of abstraction and coordinating the input of all disciplines, including precision engineering. ASML has become the most successful exponent of Dutch system architecture thinking, which emerged from Philips and is now widely supported by the high-tech industry. The Martin van den Brink Award has now been awarded four times, with the namesake always providing the official presentation.
Van den Brink also provided the foreword to the book that DSPE published about Wim van der Hoek, who died in 2019. At Philips and Eindhoven University of Technology, Van der Hoek laid the foundation for the Dutch precision mechanics design school. This is aimed at positioning accuracy and control of dynamic behaviour and is reflected in the high-tech mechatronics with which the Netherlands has become a world leader. “At ASML we use his ideas to this day,” Van den Brink wrote. “The importance of this lies in thinking fundamentally about a design, for example how to hold something or how to make it stiff. You also have to be able to talk about it well, analytically and emotionally, be able to look at problems in different ways and be able to argue well.”
When his retirement from ASML was announced, the DSPE board decided to underline the close bond with Van den Brink by awarding him honorary membership. “Martin has not only provided direction for the development of ASML’s machines, but also for the professionalisation and growth of the many suppliers,” explains Krikhaar. “There are many DSPE members among them, just as ASML itself is a valued member of our society. On behalf of the members, we would like to show our appreciation for Martin’s technological leadership, continued commitment to our companies and his tireless efforts. We are pleased that Martin has accepted honorary membership of DSPE and thus once again endorses the importance of precision engineering.”
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Martin van den Brink using a loupe to study the wafer he received as a gift from DSPE to mark his honorary membership. “Martin doesn’t appreciate personality cult,” DSPE president Hans Krikhaar declares. “Therefore, his merits for the Dutch high-tech precision industry have been written on the wafer in the smallest of fonts. This is what Martin has been doing all his professional life; making things small.”