Cornelis Rudolphus Theodorus Krayenhoff

Corneli(u)s Rudolphus Theodorus, Baron Krayenhoff (Nijmegen, 2 June 1758 – Nijmegen, 24 November 1840) was a physicist, artist, general, hydraulic engineer, cartographer and - against his will and for only a short time - Dutch Minister of War.

His father was a hydraulic engineer and soldier in Nijmegen, with brewing as a sideline. Krayenhoff was educated in Nijmegen, Arnhem and Harderwijk. In the latter city he met Herman Willem Daendels, later a fellow-revolutionary. He had been intended to study law, but began to study philosophy and medicine instead (1777–1783). He wrote his dissertations on the theory of the imagination and a medical survey of the dysentery epidemic that raged in Nijmegen in 1783. He established himself as a physician in Amsterdam, after he had declined an offer of a professorate in medicine at Franeker university. He was a member of the Concordia et Libertate genootschap and of Maatschappij tot Nut van 't Algemeen. In the Felix Meritis genootschap he presented physics experiments and lectured on art history, while taking lessons in painting. He refused a request to take charge of organizing military inundations around Amsterdam during the Patriot Revolt of 1785-7. This may have contributed to the fall of Amsterdam to the Prussians in 1787, when they intervened in favor of stadtholder William V.

Krayenhoff was an authority on electricity and lightning. The spire of the Grote or Martinikerk (a church in Doesburg) was, in 1782, the first building in the Netherlands to be equipped with a lightning conductor. He and Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk in 1787 won first prize for their article on electricity. In 1791 he became a member of the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen, and in 1808 member of the Royal Institute (a scientific genootschap, one of the predecessors of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).

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