Nicolaes Tulp Nicolaes Tulp Nicolaes Tulp (9 October 1593 – 12 September 1674) was a Dutch surgeon and mayor of Amsterdam. Tulp was well known for his upstanding moral character and as the subject of Rembrandt's famous painting "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp". Born Claes Pieterszoon, he was the son of a prosperous merchant active in civic affairs in Amsterdam. From 1611 to 1614 he studied medicine in Leiden. When he returned to Amsterdam he became a respected doctor and in 1617 he married Aagfe Van der Voegh. An ambitious young man, he adopted the tulip as his heraldric emblem
The Doctor (Doctor Who) elaborate that the Doctor chose the name as a promise for the sort of man he wants to be: "Never cruel or cowardly. Never giving up and never giving in." By contrast, the Eleventh Doctor spoke of the War Doctor (John Hurt) as being the man who broke that promise, being the one to fight in the Time War before learning the actual fate of the Time Lords. Since contradicted by the television series, the 2003 Telos novella "Frayed" by Tara Samms, set prior to the programme's first episode in 1963, presents the alternative explanation that the Doctor was given