Looijenga studied mathematics at the University of Amsterdam beginning in 1965, and earned a master's degree there in 1971. He obtained a Dutch fellowship for two years of study at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in France, and then returned to the University of Amsterdam, earning a Ph.D. in 1974 under the supervision of Nicolaas Kuiper.[4][5] After postdoctoral research at the University of Liverpool, he took a faculty position at the University of Nijmegen in 1975, returned as a professor to the University of Amsterdam in 1987, and moved again to Utrecht in 1991. Since his 2013 retirement, he has also held a professorship at Tsinghua University.[4]
Looijenga, Eduard J. N. (1984). Isolated singular points on complete intersections. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series. Vol. 77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-28674-3. MR0747303.