Bengt Strömgren
Bengt Georg Daniel Strömgren (born January 21, 1908 in Gothenburg , Sweden , † July 4, 1987 ) was a Danish astronomer and astrophysicist .
Career
His parents were Hedvig Strömgren and Svante Elis Strömgren , who was professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and director of the Copenhagen observatory .
As a teenager, Bengt Strömgren dealt with astronomical and physical topics, and he also gained experience in the developing quantum mechanics at the nearby Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics . He studied at the University of Copenhagen, where he completed his doctoral thesis on a topic from celestial mechanics in 1929 . Strömgren's interests lay in the connection of astronomical observation and mathematical-physical theory, with an emphasis on careful numerical analysis.
In 1936 he began a stay at the University of Chicago and the Yerkes Observatory in the USA, but then returned to Denmark in 1938, where he took over a professorship in astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and in 1940 succeeded his father as head of the Copenhagen observatory. Due to insufficient state funding, Bengt Strömgren left Denmark in 1951 and became director of the Yerkes Observatory and the McDonald Observatory . Six years later, in 1957, he was appointed senior professor of theoretical astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton , where he took over Albert Einstein's office. In 1967 he returned to Denmark where he was director of Nordita for several years . Strömgren was Secretary General of the International Astronomical Union from 1948 to 1955 and its President from 1975 to 1977.
Bengt Strömgren made invaluable contributions to astrophysics. He determined the chemical (atomic) composition of stars more precisely, which deviated greatly from previous estimates. He investigated the physics of the Strömgren sphere named after him , the H-II region around a hot star, in which all hydrogen is present in ionized form. He developed a photometric system which, through the clever choice of its four bands and the Hβ index, allows the determination of many properties of hot stars from this relatively easy-to-measure photometry alone.
Awards
In 1955, Strömgren was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1971 to the National Academy of Sciences, and 1973 to the American Philosophical Society . Since 1969 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences . In 1974 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .
Naming honors
- (1846) Bengt , an asteroid of the main belt
- Strömgren Sphere
- Strömgren photometry , at that time a new type of photoelectric four-color photometry
Other awards
- 1959 Bruce Medal
- 1962 Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
- 1965 Henry Norris Russell Lectureship
- 1969 Karl Schwarzschild Medal
Web links
- The Bruce Medalists: Bengt Stromgren
- Literature by and about Bengt Strömgren in the catalog of the German National Library
- Publications by B. Strömgren in the Astrophysics Data System
- Obituaries for B. Strömgren in the Astrophysics Data System
Individual evidence
- ^ List of members since 1666: Letter S. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 5, 2020 (French).
- ↑ Member entry of Bengt Georg Daniel Strömgren at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 21, 2016.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Strömgren, Bengt |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Strömgren, Bengt Georg Daniel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Danish astronomer and astrophysicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 21, 1908 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gothenburg , Sweden |
| DATE OF DEATH | 4th July 1987 |