Cornelis "Kees" Boeke (25 September 1884 3 July 1966) was a Dutch reformist educator, Quaker missionary and pacifist. He is best known for his popular essay/book Cosmic View (1957) which presents a seminal view of the universe, from the galactic to the microscopic scale, and which inspired several films. Boeke tried to reform education by allowing the children to contribute their ideas. He called this process sociocracy and regarded schools as workshops, with pupils as workers, and teachers as co-workers. Based on Quaker ideas, he wanted the children to respect democracy. In 1926, he founded a school in Bilthoven, which he led until 1954. As a child, the later Dutch Queen Beatrix attended the school. Biography Boeke was born on 25 September 1884 to a Mennonite family in Alkmaar, Netherlands, where he grew up. He studied architecture at the Delft University of Technology. As a student, he spent a year in England, where he met the Quakers. He became a Quaker and attended Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centres, a college in Selly Oak, Birmingham. There, he found inspiration in Bournville, the garden village which the Cadbury family (owners of the chocolate factory) had built for their workers. He met and married Beatrice (Betty) Cadbury. The couple went to modern day Lebanon in 1912 as Quaker missionaries, where Kees was headmaster at the Brummana School. In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, they returned to England. They became active in peace work, the Fellowship of Reconciliation having come into being in 1914 through Henry Hodgkin. In 1915 Boeke traveled to Berlin, where he met Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, with whom Hodgkin had been working at the outbreak of war. Boeke began to speak publicly in England: "The Germans are our brothers; God did not create man that he might kill; the war will find its quickest end when all soldiers lay down their weapons." He was deported from Britain and returned to the Netherlands. His family followed; there they lived in Bilthoven, near Utrecht. Their home soon became a pacifist centre. Later in the Second World War, Boeke took part in the underground Dutch resistance movement against the same Germans that he called brothers before. This was, however, in line with his ideas of anti-authoritianism and his disapproval of war and prosecution. After the First World War, Boeke erected a large conference centre in Bilthoven, which he called "Brotherhood House." The first