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Willem de Sitter
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Willem de Sitter (May 6, 1872, Sneek – November 20, 1934, Leiden [1]) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer.
Born in Friesland, De Sitter studied mathematics at Groningen University and then joined the Groningen astronomical laboratory. He worked at the Cape Observatory in South Africa (1897-1899) then, in 1908, de Sitter was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Leiden University. He was director of the Leiden Observatory from 1919 until his death.
De Sitter made major contributions to the field of physical cosmology. He co-authored a paper with Albert Einstein in 1932 in which they argued that there might be large amounts of matter which do not emit light, now commonly referred to as dark matter. He also came up with the concept of the de Sitter universe, a solution for Einstein's general relativity in which there is no matter and a positive cosmological constant. This results in an exponentially expanding, empty universe.
De Sitter was also famous for his research on the planet Jupiter.
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His son, Aernout de Sitter, was director of the Bosscha Observatory in Lembang, Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies), where he studied the M4 globular cluster. He was captured by the Japanese when they invaded at the outset of World War II, and died in a Sumatra labour camp in September of 1944 [2] [3] [4].
Awards
- James Craig Watson Medal (1929)
- Bruce Medal (1931)
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1931)
Named after him
- De Sitter crater on the Moon
- Asteroid 1686 De Sitter
- De Sitter universe
- De Sitter space
- De Sitter horizon
- O'Connor, John J., and Edmund F. Robertson. "Willem de Sitter". MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
- P.C. van der Kruit Willem de Sitter (1872 – 1934) in: History of science and scholarship in the Netherlands.
- A. Blaauw, Sitter, Willem de (1872-1934), in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland.
- Bruce Medal page
- Awarding of Bruce Medal: PASP 43 (1931) 125
- Awarding of RAS gold medal: MNRAS 91 (1931) 422
- de Sitter's binary star arguments against Ritz's relativity theory (1913) (four articles)
- AN 253 (1934) 495/496 (one line)
- JRASC 29 (1935) 1
- MNRAS 95 (1935) 343
- Obs 58 (1935) 22
- PASP 46 (1934) 368 (one paragraph)
- PASP 47 (1935) 65