Jan Hendrik Oort: Master of the Galactic System

Description

This book is the first thorough and overdue biography of one of the giants of science in the twentieth century, Jan Hendrik Oort. His fundamental contributions had a lasting effect on the development of our insight and a profound influence on the international organization and cooperation in his area of science and on the efforts and contribution of his native country. This book aims at describing Oort's life and works in the context of the development of his branch of science and as a tribute to a great scientist in a broader sense. The astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort from the Netherlands was founder of studies of the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way Galaxy, initiator of radioastronomy and the European Southern Observatory, and an important contributor to many areas of astronomy, from the study of comets to the universe on the largest scales. Front Matter ....Pages i-xx Growing Up in Oegstgeest (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 1-22 Kapteyn and Groningen (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 23-68 Stars of High Velocity (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 69-116 Via Yale to Leiden (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 117-156 Rotation of the Galaxy; Marriage (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 157-200 Galactic Structure and Dynamics (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 201-238 The Oort Limit and Galaxy Photometry (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 239-276 Professor and Adjunct-Director (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 277-326 World War II: The Watershed (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 327-374 Opening Up New Avenues (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 375-420 Spiral Structure, Interstellar Medium and the Crab (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 421-470 Dwingeloo, ESO, the Vatican and the Cross-Antenna (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 471-516 Galactic Structure and the Dwingeloo Telescope (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 517-562 Westerbork, Retirement and Beyond (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 563-596 The Last Horizon (Pieter C. van der Kruit)....Pages 597-620 Back Matter ....Pages 621-726