List of Famous people named Cornelis

Cornelis de Houtman, brother of Frederick de Houtman, was a Dutch explorer who discovered a new sea route from Europe to the East Indies, and who thus begun the Dutch spice trade. At the time, the Portuguese Empire held a monopoly on the spice trade, and the voyage was a symbolic victory for the Dutch, even though the voyage itself was a disaster. Houtman was also a spy, having worked against the Portuguese by bringing back to the Netherlands privileged nautical information obtained during his stay in Portugal.

Cornelis Nicolaas Hin was a sailor from the Netherlands, who represented his native country at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Ostend, Belgium.

Cornelis "Kees" de Jager was a Dutch astronomer who specialized in predicting solar variation to assess the Sun's impact on future climate. He was the General Secretary of the IAU from 1967 to 1973 and former director of the observatory at Utrecht. He was a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and played an important role in the European skeptical movement as the first chairman of both Stichting Skepsis and the European Council of Skeptical Organisations.

Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts or Gysbrechts was a Flemish painter who was active in the Spanish Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden in the second half of the seventeenth century. He was a court painter to the Danish royal family. He specialised in trompe-l'œil still lifes, an artistic genre which uses visual tricks to give viewers the illusion that they are not looking at a painting but rather at real three-dimensional objects. He also created many vanitas still lifes.

Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel was a Dutch engineer and inventor. He was the builder of the first navigable submarine in 1620 and an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, optics and chemistry.

Cornelis Corneliszoon van Haarlem, Dutch Golden Age painter and draughtsman, was one of the leading Northern Mannerist artists in the Netherlands, and an important forerunner of Frans Hals as a portraitist.

Cornelis Floris or Cornelis (II) Floris De Vriendt was a Flemish sculptor, print artist and architect. He developed a new style, which was informed by Flemish traditions, the 16th century Italian renaissance and possibly the School of Fontainebleau. His innovations spread throughout Northern Europe where they had a major influence on the development of sculpture and architecture in the 16th and early 17th centuries.

Cornelis Bicker, heer (lord) Van Swieten and of Kasteel Swieten, was a regent of the Dutch Republic and a governor of the Dutch West India Company. He was also a sugar merchant, hoogheemraad of the Hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland and a counsellor of the States of Holland and West Friesland for Amsterdam at The Hague.

Cornelis of Glymes or Cornelis of Bergen was an Admiral of the Netherlands.