Fred Polak

After the war he became a staff member and managing director of the Netherlands' Central Planning Bureau, personal advisor to the Minister of Education (Art and Science), advisor of the Dutch government for Full Employment, Professor of Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Managing Director of an industrial organization at Twente (Netherlands).

Author of many publications on futurology, Polak was recipient of Fellowships from UNESCO, the Ford Foundation, and the Council of Europe which awarded him a prize for the two-volume book The Image of the Future.

He was the founder and first president of Teleac (Dutch television academy), co-founder and vice-president of the Erasmus Prize Foundation, and scientific advisor for long-term planning to numerous concerns in the Netherlands.

He was engaged in setting up an institute for long-term future research and development in the Netherlands and was also Secretary-General of the International Society for Technology Assessment.

A 2005 article by Ruud van der Helm states:[1] "Among the founders of the futures studies field, the Dutch sociologist Fred Polak is one of the least known.