Overview
- Presents the life and work of the Dutch astronomer Jacobus C. Kapteyn, who contributed significantly to the cataloging and measuring of star parallaxes
- Includes historical details on the major impact of World War I on Kapteyn’s life and scientific achievements
- Written by an author who has spent most of his career working in the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen, and is familiar with their extensive relevant archival material
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Astrophysics and Space Science Library (ASSL, volume 416)
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Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Reviews
“It is extremely detailed, covering all aspects of Kapteyn’s life, and is liberally illustrated, especially with portraits. … This lengthy and detailed work will be an invaluable reference for historians of science.” (Derek Jones, The Observatory, Issue 1248, October, 2015)
“…van der Kruit’s biography is an authoritative and highly valuable contribution to the history of astronomy and a rich source of information concerning Kapteyn and Dutch and international astronomy ca. 1880-1920.” –Helge Kragh, Journal for the History of Astronomy, Volume 46, Issue 4, November 2015
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Pieter C. van der Kruit is the Jacobus C. Kapteyn Honorary Professor of Astronomy at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD in astronomy from Leiden University in 1971 under Jan Hendrik Oort. He held a prestigious Carnegie postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories in Pasadena, California, before moving to the University of Groningen in 1975. He has held visiting positions at numerous institutions, including the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra, Australia; the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA; the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, and the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California.
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His research concerns structure and dynamics of disks in galaxies. He has published over 160 papers, more than half as lead or sole author, contributed substantially toover 20 more, and authored or edited six books. In Groningen he taught introductory astronomy and advanced level courses on structure and dynamics of galaxies for many years, the latter also at a Saas-Fee winter school in Switzerland and in university curricula in Porto, Portugal, in Santiago, Chile and in Beijing, China. He is a former director of the Kapteyn Institute and has been a member and often chairman of numerous national and international boards and committees, notably President of Council of the European Southern Observatory and chairman of the Board for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array ALMA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn
Book Subtitle: Born Investigator of the Heavens
Authors: Pieter C. van der Kruit
Series Title: Astrophysics and Space Science Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10876-6
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Physics and Astronomy, Physics and Astronomy (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-10875-9Published: 28 November 2014
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-38405-4Published: 24 September 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-10876-6Published: 18 November 2014
Series ISSN: 0067-0057
Series E-ISSN: 2214-7985
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXIV, 698
Number of Illustrations: 197 b/w illustrations, 99 illustrations in colour
Topics: Astronomy, Observations and Techniques, History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics