One of the founding fathers of informatica (computer science) and designer of ALGOL, van Wijngaarden was a pioneering figure in the history of computing. Adriaan's education was in mechanical engineering, for which Wijngaarden received a degree from Delft University of Technology in 1939. He then studied for a doctorate in hydrodynamics, but then abandoned the area. He joined the Nationaal Luchtvaartlaboratorium in 1945 and went with a group to England the following year to learn about new technologies that had been developed there during World War II.
Van Wijngaarden was intrigued by the new idea of automatic computing, and on 1 January 1947 he became the head of the Computing Department of the brand-new Mathematisch Centrum (MC) in Amsterdam. Wijngaarden then made further visits to England and the United States, gathering ideas for the construction of the first Dutch computer, the ARRA, an electromechanical construction first demonstrated in 1952. In that same year, van Wijngaarden hired Edsger Dijkstra, and they worked on software for the ARRA.
