Johannes C. "Hans" Severiens earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Johns Hopkins. He worked as a scientist at Perkin-Elmer, Columbia University, the Atomic Energy commission, and the Niels Bohr Institute.
He eventually began a "second" career in finance and became a Vice President in investment banking with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Merrill Lynch, and Paine Webber.
Over the last 10 years, Severiens has been an officer in three venture capital funds. In 1995, he co-founded the Band of Angels, a Silicon Valley investor group of over 100 executives, which invests in tech companies.
Dr. Severiens passed away on February 3, 2004 in Sonoma, California, after battling lung cancer for more than a year. He was 74.