Willem Louis van der Poel (2 December 1926 – 22 July 2024) was a Dutch computer scientist, who is known for designing one of the first computers to be designed in the Netherlands, the Zeer Eenvoudige Binaire Reken Automaat (ZEBRA), translated as Very Simple Binary Automatic Calculator.

The title of his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) thesis was The Logical Principles of Some Simple Computers.

From 1950 until 1967, he worked for the Dutch Posterijen, Telegrafie en Telefonie (Netherlands) (PTT, renamed KPN).

He was involved with international standards in programming and informatics, as a member of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1 on Algorithmic Languages and Calculi,[1] which specified, maintains, and supports the programming languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68.

In 1971, Van der Poel was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.