George McVittie

George Cunliffe McVittie (born June 5, 1904 in Izmir , † March 8, 1988 in Canterbury ) was a British theoretical cosmologist.

Life

McVittie was born in Smyrna, where his father was a merchant. His mother came from a respected Greek intellectual family. He was raised bilingually in French and English and studied mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh from 1923 under Edmund T. Whittaker and Charles Galton Darwin, among others . In 1928 he received his masters degree, began his PhD with Whittaker and then went to Cambridge (Christ's College), where he received his PhD with Arthur Eddington . From 1930 to 1934 he was Assistant Lecturer at the University of Leeds , 1933/34 Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and from 1936 to 1958 Reader at King's College, University of London . During the Second World War he worked in the meteorological service, which also led to publications in meteorology. From 1948 he was a professor at Queen Mary's College of the University of London and from 1952 to 1972 professor at the observatory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where he expanded the small astronomy department into one of the leading in the country. His administrative skills led him to become secretary of the American Astronomical Society. From 1972 to 1988 he was an honorary professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he received an honorary doctorate in 1985.

In 1943 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and in 1933 the Royal Astronomical Society .

McVittie had been married since 1934. The main outer belt asteroid (2417) McVittie is named after him. The George C. McVittie School in the Drayton Plains, Michigan is named after him.

Clive W. Kilmister is one of his PhD students .

literature

MAH MacCallum: George Cunliffe McVittie (1904-1988) , Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 30, 1989, pp. 119-122. ( bibcode : 1989QJRAS..30..119M )

Fonts

Cosmological Theory, 1937, 2nd edition, Wiley 1949
General Relativity and Cosmology, Wiley 1956, 2nd edition 1965
Fact and Theory in Cosmology, Macmillan 1961

Web links

John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : George McVittie. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
GC McVittie publications in the Astrophysics Data System
Obituaries for GC McVittie in the Astrophysics Data System

Individual evidence

↑ George McVittie in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 10, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1964 CD. Discovered 1964 Feb. 15 at the Goethe Link Observatory at Brooklyn, Indiana. "

personal data
SURNAME	McVittie, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	McVittie, George Cunliffe (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British cosmologist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 5, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH	Izmir
DATE OF DEATH	March 8, 1988
Place of death	Canterbury

[1] George McVittie in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)

[2] Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on August 10, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1964 CD. Discovered 1964 Feb. 15 at the Goethe Link Observatory at Brooklyn, Indiana. "