Solco W. Tromp Foundation
The Management Board
The Solco W. Tromp Foundation is governed by a Board composed of five members:
Chairperson: Leo Peeters Weem
Leo Peeters Weem (1957) was born and raised in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. Between 1976 and 1982 he studied Public Administration at Twente University after which he started his career with ABN/AMRO Bank. During the 22 years at ABN/AMRO Leo fulfilled a wide range of roles, including but not limited to Account Manager business clients, Head of M&A Netherlands, Regional Director corporate clients and Board Member of the Domestic Division of the bank. He continued his career path at AEGON as CEO of Meeùs Group, their Real Estate and Financial Services subsidiary. After 5 years Leo returned to banking and joined Rabobank. At Rabobank again Leo fulfilled various positions and in the last years before retiring in 2023, he was responsible for the Domestic Business of the bank in the Western part of the Netherlands. Leo holds several non-executive positions in Profit and Not-for-Profit organisations.
Treasurer: Oscar Jonker
Oscar Jonker (1962) was born in Wassenaar, the Netherlands where he also attended high school. He studied Business Economics and Accountancy in Rotterdam and started his career with Ernst & Young in 1986. He became audit partner in 1998, focusing on multinational clients and family businesses in retail, IT and automotive. In addition, he had various board positions with non profit organizations involved with education and sports. In 2023 he retired from Ernst & Young which allowed him to focus more on his hobbies (golf and music) and on his voluntary work.
Secretary: Peter C. Römer
Peter Römer (1958) was born and raised in Wassenaar, The Netherlands. After studying in Leiden he has been a lawyer in The Hague for 20 years. In 2004 he was appointed judge in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal, from which appointment he retired in 2023. Peter holds several positions in non profit organisations. He is secretary of the Tromp Foundation since 1998.
Scientific Officer: Peter Höppe
Peter Höppe (1954) was born and raised in Bavaria, Germany. His academic education is in meteorology (Masters and PhD) and human biology (PhD). Since 2004 he has been a Professor for Biometeorology. He has worked in different institutes at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and as a post doc at Yale University (USA). From 2004 to 2017 he was Head of the Geo Risks Research Department/Corporate Climate Centre of Munich Re. His main areas of research have been effects of atmospheric processes and air pollutants on humans and the general assessment of environmental risks. Peter Höppe is scientific member of many scientific societies, from 1999 to 2002 he has been the President of the International Society of Biometeorology. In 2014 he became Chairman of the “Münchener Universitätsgesellschaft”, the sponsoring association of the “Ludwig-Maximilians-University”, Munich. Since 2017 he has been Board member of the S.W. Tromp Foundation.
Scientific Officer: Tanja Cegnar
Tanja Cegnar works at the Slovenian Environment Agency as Advisor to the Director of the Office of Meteorology, Hydrology and Oceanography. She is the editor-in-chief of the Slovenian Environmental Agency's monthly bulletin. She was a member of the Executive Board of the former WMO Commission on Climatology for two terms and has been a member of several expert teams on human biometeorology.
Tanja Cegnar is president-elect of the International Society of Biometeorology. Since 2020 she is a member of the International Affairs Committee of the American Meteorological Society. She chairs the European Meteorological Society Media and Communication Committee and received the EMS Outstanding Contribution Award in 2015 for her efforts in building this team and developing new initiatives. As a member of the EMS Science and Programme Committee, she is heavily involved in the organisation of the European Meteorological Society Annual Meetings as one of the moderators of the Engagement with Society steam of sessions and as a convener of two sessions. She has represented the Slovenian Meteorological Society on the EMS Council on several occasions. Tanja has been actively involved in the organisation of several international conferences and is currently chairing the local organising committee for EMS2025 in Ljubljana.
Since 2021 she is the President of the Slovenian Meteorological Society. Her work focuses on improving public understanding of meteorology and climate change, with an emphasis on effective communication strategies to convey complex scientific information to diverse audiences. She is the author of numerous publications in this field and is actively involved in international meteorological communities.
Obituary for Prof. Dr. Wop Rietveld (9. 11. 1937 - 6. 6. 2024)
Prof. Wop Rietveld has been the Chair of the Solco. W. Tromp Foundation (TF) from 1996 to 2024.
With deepest sorrow we, the Board of TF, are missing our Chair and colleague Prof. Wop Rietveld. He passed away on 14 June 2024 in Wassenaar, at age 86 after having had a fulfilled, healthy, and outstanding life.
Wop was born in The Hague, close to Leiden. After graduating from school, he studied at the University of Leiden where he has received a PhD and MD. He has been Head of Experimental Units at the Leiden University Medical Center. He there also became Professor of Physiological Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Since 1985, he also was Professor of Physiology and Physiological Physics at the Leiden University Medical Center.Wop’s main field of research has been biological rhythm research. In this field he has been a frontrunner. Besides many outstanding scientific papers, in 1984, Wop published a book about biological rhythms for lay audiences.
Wop has been member of several scientific societies, has been elected to Academia Europaea and served as the President of the European Society for Chronobiology and the International Society for Chronobiology. Wop for more than 25 years has been Editor and then Editor in Chief of the journal “Interdisciplinary Cycle Research”, which changed its name in 1994 into “Biological Rhythm Research”.
Wop has been a socially very engaged citizen. So e.g. he became a founder of the Association of Friends of Wassenaar, to preserve the special social environment in Wassenaar.
After his Presentation “Biological rhythms, the interaction with the environment” at the 14th International Congress of Biometeorology 1996 in Ljubljana (Slovenia) Wop met two Dutch gentlemen, de Koning and Ouwerkerk, who represented the Board of a Foundation and asked him whether he knew the Dutch colleague Dr. S.W. Tromp. He responded that he knew Tromp’s name as he had been contacted by Tromp in the mid-sixties. Tromp wanted to talk with him about an experiment on the influence of changes in weather patterns on the health of human beings. Later on, Wop learned that Tromp founded a Biometeorological Research Centre in Oegstgeest in 1956 and had a good relationship with Leiden University. De Koning and Ouwerkerk told him that since 1968 Tromp had a Foundation for Biometeorological Research. Tromp died in 1983 and according to his will part of his legacy was added to the assets of the Foundation.
De Koning and Ouwerkerk told Wop that the Foundation aimed to support biometeorological research and has been looking for a new Board which could take over the management of that Foundation. It took Wop just three days to accept the invitation. In order to become operational in a new Board with him as Chair he needed a banker and a lawyer, who he found with Dick Soelaksana and Peter Römer, the latter still today being one of the current board members.
The new Board introduced “Tromp Foundation” as an internationally used name instead of the legal Dutch name “Stichting Biometeorologisch Onderzoek”. At a board meeting in 2018 in Ljubljana the internationally used name has been finally changed into “S.W. Tromp Foundation”.
At the start, the position of the foundation was a bit complicated. Tromp in 1956 had co-founded the International Society for Biometeorology, the ISB. And for most of the years, he was its Executive Secretary, in fact he was the heart of the Society. The objectives of the foundation from the beginning were to support research and scientists in the field of biometeorology.
Peter Hoeppe as former Chair of the ISB became the liaison of the foundation with the ISB. The Board agreed on a Tromp Scientific Award for authors of outstanding articles in high-ranked journals, and on a travel fund for Board Members of ISB to enable them to attend other important meetings. In addition, the foundation supported special initiatives like those of the ISB Students and Young Professionals group within ISB.
As an official representative of the foundation, Wop attended all Board meetings of the ISB for many years and was impressed by the group's eagerness and their fascination with the topic.
In 2014, at the ISB meeting in Cleveland (USA), Tanja Cegnar, who was also a member of the ISB Board, approached Wop about extending the Foundation’s support to another Society in which research on biometeorology plays a relevant role, the European Meteorological Society, the EMS. Several groups within EMS are active in biometeorology. In September 2015, an agreement was signed between the TF and the EMS for the establishment of an EMS Tromp Award as well as for up to six travel awards for Young Scientists to participate at the EMS Annual meetings.
With the extension of the beneficiaries of the support of the TF, the three Board members felt more and more a need for closer, more direct, contact with Tanja and Peter. More expertise about the scientific aspects was sought for. So Wop initiated an extension of the Board by two new members. In 2018, again in Ljubljana, the first full Board meeting took place.
Wop has been fascinated by Biometeorology as he had been a fan of natural sciences from an early age. Especially in the recent years he has been very alarmed by the challenges to nature, to our world, especially by the climate crisis.
He very early noticed that it was very difficult for young scientists to get a chance in the academic world. The grant system was unpredictable and many talented youngsters left after a while, disillusioned. At that time, he realized how important it is to start a research career under optimal conditions. With that attitude in mind, he has run the TF more than 25 years. In his role as TF Chair, he attended all ISB congresses and EMS conferences and actively interacted with the participants; this allowed him to keep abreast of trends in biometeorology. He was very keen to interact with the TF awardees, most of them young scientists.
It was Wop's idea to organize the workshop Agrometeorologists for Farmers in Hotter, Drier, Wetter Future, which took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2016. Wop was concerned very much about the agricultural sector, which is one of the most affected sectors by climate change.
Wop has been the face of the foundation for more than 25 years. The combined effects of critical environmental changes and the difficult academic environment especially for young scientists have motivated Wop to chair the TF for such a long time.
Throughout his long professional life, he was known for always being organized, diligent, responsible, conscientious and thoughtful. In this sense he also has run the TF for so many years. It was his intitiative, in the beginning of 2024, to hand over his role as chairman of the foundation to Leo Peeters Weem, only two months before he died. This is testament to the dedication he had for the foundation.
We, the current Board of the TF, thank Wop very much for his extraordinary commitment to the foundation and his excellent work and many outstanding initiatives.
We will always honour his memory and are committed to his legacy.