// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy did Willem Jacob Luyten's star go to therapy? It had a lot of stellar lutens to work through.
Willem Jacob Luyten | |
|---|---|
 Luyten in 1971 | |
| Born | March 7, 1899 |
| Died | November 21, 1994 (aged 95) Minneapolis, United States |
| Alma mater | Leiden University |
| Awards | James Craig Watson Medal (1964) Bruce Medal (1968) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | astronomy |
| Institutions | Lick Observatory, Harvard College Observatory University of Minnesota |
| Ejnar Hertzsprung | |
Willem Jacob Luyten (March 7, 1899 – November 21, 1994) was a Dutch-American astronomer.[1][2][3][4][5]
Life
[edit]Jacob Luyten was born in Semarang, Java, at the time part of the Dutch East Indies.[2] His mother was Cornelia M. Francken and his father Jacob Luyten, a teacher of French.
At the age of 11 he observed Halley's Comet, which started his fascination with astronomy. He also had a knack for languages, and eventually could speak nine. In 1912 his family moved back to the Netherlands where he studied astronomy at the University of Amsterdam, receiving his BA in 1918.
He was the first student to earn his PhD (at the age of 22) with Ejnar Hertzsprung at Leiden University. In 1921 he left for the United States where he first worked at the Lick Observatory. From 1923 to 1930 Luyten worked at the Harvard College Observatory eventually working at the observatory's Bloemfontein station in South Africa. He spent the years 1928–1930 in Bloemfontein, where he met Willemina H. Miedema and married her on February 5, 1930.
Upon his return to the United States in 1931, he taught at the University of Minnesota from 1931–1967, then served as astronomer emeritus from 1967 until his death.
Luyten studied the proper motions of stars and discovered many white dwarfs. He appears to have been the first to use the term white dwarf when he examined this class of stars in 1922.[6][7][8][9] He also discovered some of the Sun's nearest neighbors, including Luyten's Star as well as the high–proper motion binary star system Luyten 726-8, which was soon found to contain the remarkable flare star UV Ceti.
He published a series of catalogues of high proper motion stars. He catalogued 17,000 high-proper motion stars in the Luyten Two-Tenths Arcsecond Catalog.[10]
Honors
[edit]Awards
- James Craig Watson Medal (1964)
- Bruce Medal (1968)
Named after him
References
[edit]- ↑ "Willem Jacob Luyten", Marquis Who's Who, 2006.
- 1 2 Upgren, Arthur R. (1995). "Willem Jacob Luyten (1899–1994)". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 107 (713). Astronomical Society of the Pacific: 603–605. Bibcode:1995PASP..107..603U. doi:10.1086/133599.
- ↑ Abt, H. A. (1968). "Award of the Bruce Gold Medal to Professor Willem J. Luyten". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 80 (474). Astronomical Society of the Pacific: 247–250. Bibcode:1968PASP...80..247A. doi:10.1086/128625.
- ↑ Upgren, A. R. (1996). "Willem Jacob Luyten (1899–1994)". Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 37 (3). Royal Astronomical Society: 453–456. Bibcode:1996QJRAS..37..453U. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
- ↑ Luyten, J. R. (1995). "Willem Jacob Luyten, 1899–1994". Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society. 27 (4). American Astronomical Society: 1480–1481. Bibcode:1995BAAS...27.1480L. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
- ↑ Luyten, W.J. (1922). "The mean parallax of early-type stars of determined proper motion and apparent magnitude". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 34 (199): 156. Bibcode:1922PASP...34..156L. doi:10.1086/123176.
- ↑ Luyten, W.J. (1922). "Note on some faint early-type stars with large proper motions". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 34 (197): 54. Bibcode:1922PASP...34...54L. doi:10.1086/123146.
- ↑ Luyten, W.J. (1922). "Additional note on faint early-type stars with large proper motions". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 34 (198): 132. Bibcode:1922PASP...34..132L. doi:10.1086/123168.
- ↑ Aitken, R.G. (1922). "Comet c 1922 (Baade)". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 34 (202): 353. Bibcode:1922PASP...34..353A. doi:10.1086/123244.
- ↑ "Luyten Two-Tenths Arcsecond Catalog".
External links
[edit]
- 1899 births
- 1994 deaths
- 20th-century Dutch astronomers
- 20th-century American astronomers
- Dutch emigrants to the United States
- Harvard University staff
- People from Semarang
- University of Amsterdam alumni
- Leiden University alumni
- University of Minnesota faculty
- Harvard College Observatory people
- Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
- Dutch people of the Dutch East Indies