Cornelis T. de Wit

Cornelis Teunis de Wit, born 1924 and died 1993, was a Dutch scientist at Wageningen University who pioneered the use of computer simulation to model agricultural systems. Beginning in the mid-1960s he combined physical and biological principles to build models simulating the growth and yield of crops in a given environment, accounting for processes such as transpiration, photosynthesis, respiration and competition between plants, work that established Wageningen as a center for agricultural systems modeling and influenced a regional United States research project on production system models begun in 1969. In 1983 he shared the Wolf Prize in Agriculture with Don Kirkham for contributions to the quantitative understanding of soil-water and environmental interactions influencing crop growth and yield.