Johannes Franciscus Abraham Karel (Johan) van Benthem (born June 12, 1949, Rijswijk) is a University Professor (universiteitshoogleraar) of logic at the University of Amsterdam at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation and professor of philosophy at Stanford University (at CSLI). He was awarded the Spinozapremie in 1996.
He studied physics (B.Sc. 1969), philosophy (M.A. 1972) and mathematics (M.Sc. 1973) at the University of Amsterdam and received a PhD from the same university under supervision of Martin Löb in 1977. Before becoming University Professor in 2003, he held appointments at the University of Amsterdam (1973–1977), at the University of Groningen (1977–1986, and as a professor at the University of Amsterdam (1986–2003).
Van Benthem is known for his research in the area of modal logic. This research has resulted in Van Benthem's Theorem, which states that modal logic is the fragment of first-order logic that is closed under bisimulation.
He has also been active in the fields of philosophy of science, logical structures in natural language (generalized quantifiers, categorial grammar, substructural proof theory), dynamic logic and update logic and applications of logic to game theory as well as applications of game theory to logic (game semantics). Van Benthem is a member of the group collectively publishing under the pseudonym L. T. F. Gamut.