- Maarten Schmidt
-
Maarten Schmidt Born December 28, 1929
GroningenNationality Dutch Fields astronomy Institutions California Institute of Technology Alma mater Leiden Observatory Known for quasars Maarten Schmidt (born December 28, 1929) is a Dutch astronomer who measured the distances of quasars.
Born in Groningen, The Netherlands,[1] Schmidt studied with Jan Hendrik Oort. He earned his Ph.D. degree from Leiden Observatory in 1956.
In 1959, he emigrated to the United States and went to work at the California Institute of Technology. In the beginning, he worked on theories about the mass distribution and dynamics of galaxies. Of particular note from this period was his formulation of what has become known as the Schmidt law, which relates the density of interstellar gas to the rate of star formation occurring in that gas.[2][3] He later began a study of the light spectra of radio sources. In 1963, using the famous 200-inch reflector telescope at the Palomar Observatory, Schmidt identified the visible object corresponding to one of these radio sources, known as 3C 273 and also studied its spectrum. While its star-like appearance suggested it was relatively nearby, the spectrum of 3C 273 proved to have what was at the time a high redshift of 0.158, showing that it lay far beyond the Milky Way, and thus possessed an extraordinarily high luminosity. Schmidt termed 3C 273 a "quasi-stellar" object or quasar; thousands have since been identified.
Honors
Awards
- Helen B. Warner Prize (1964)
- Front cover of Time March 11, 1966 [4]
- Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1978)
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1980)
- James Craig Watson Medal (1991)
- Bruce Medal (1992)
- Kavli Prize for Astrophysics (2008)
- Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.[5]
Named after him
References
- ^ "The Rumford Prize". Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (American Academy of Arts & Sciences) 22 (3): 8–9. January 1969. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3822873. Retrieved 2009-06-26.
- ^ Schmidt, Maarten (1959). "The Rate of Star Formation". The Astrophysical Journal 129: 243. Bibcode 1959ApJ...129..243S. doi:10.1086/146614.
- ^ Kennicutt, Robert C. (1998). "The global Schmidt law in star-forming galaxies". The Astrophysical Journal 498 (2): 541. arXiv:astro-ph/9712213. Bibcode 1998ApJ...498..541K. doi:10.1086/305588.
- ^ Time. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19660311,00.html.
- ^ "Gruppe 2: Fysikkfag (herunder astronomi, fysikk og geofysikk)" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. http://www.dnva.no/c26849/artikkel/vis.html?tid=40118. Retrieved 7 October 2010.
External links
This European astronomer-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
