Laurens de Haan (born 15 January 1937) is a Dutch economist and Emeritus Professor of Probability and Mathematical Statistics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in extreme value theory.

[1] De Haan started his academic career in 1966 as researcher in probability and statistics at the Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam.

He was awarded a Doctor honoris causa from the Universidade de Lisboa in 2000 and the Medallion lecture at the I.M.S. annual meeting in Gothenburg in 2000.

The "Overschrijdingslijnen" was a research project based on extreme-value analysis, meant to provide new standards for the Dutch sea defenses.

In this joint project people participated from "Rijkswaterstaat", the Dutch government agency overseeing the sea defenses; the Royal Netherlands Meteorological service; and the CWI Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam.