Adriaan Daniël Fokker was born on 17 August 1887 in Buitenzorg, Dutch East Indies (now Bogor, Indonesia), the son of Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker, president of the branch of the Netherlands Trading Society in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, and Susanna Alida der Kinderen.

[4] Fokker began to study music theory during the Second World War, when the University of Leiden was closed; partly this was due to a desire to convince the Nazis he would be of no use to the war effort, and partly it was a response to reading the work of Christiaan Huygens on the 31 equal temperament.

In 1938, Fokker – along with Dirk Coster and Otto Hahn – helped Jewish-born physicist Lise Meitner escape from Austria to the Netherlands.

Historian Ruth Lewin Sime writes They were unsuccessful in obtaining funding, but Fokker succeeded in getting official permission for Meitner to leave, although he was unable to telegraph that to her due to secrecy.

The Fokker organ is currently property of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation and it moved to the Bamzaal in Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ.