Louis G. Henyey

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Louis George Henyey (born February 3, 1910 in McKees Rocks , Pennsylvania , † February 18, 1970 in Berkeley , California ) was an American astrophysicist .

Life

Henyey grew up in Cleveland , Ohio , and received his Masters from the Case School of Applied Science there in 1933. In 1937 he received his doctorate at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago with a mathematical doctoral thesis on reflection fog . In 1947 he was appointed assistant professor to the Department of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley , and was promoted to full professor in 1954.

At Berkeley he became the head of the stellar evolution research group . He was particularly committed to an efficient data center in Berkeley and was its first director in 1958.

He died unexpectedly of a brain haemorrhage in 1970.

plant

Henyey is known for his contributions to star structure and evolution. He was one of the first to use a computer program to calculate the evolution of the stars. His method of solving partial differential equations became known as the Henyey method .

The course of the development of protostars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram , which results from the model he used, is called the Henyey line . Since the model does not take into account the convection in the star's shell, this is only a good approximation when approaching the main sequence in the case of massive stars .

Honors

In 1968 Henyey was elected to the National Academy of Sciences . The lunar crater Henyey (see list of craters of the earth's moon / H ) and the asteroid (1365) Henyey is named after him.

literature

  • Karl ‐ Heinz Bohm: Henyey, Louis George. In: Thomas Hockey (Ed.): The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, 2009. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0 , p. 485. [1]

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn , Alfred Weigert , Achim Weiss: Stellar Structure and Evolution. 2nd Edition. Springer-Verlag Berlin, 2012. ISBN 978-3-642-30255-8 , section "12.2 The Henyey Method", pp. 106-113.
  2. ↑ LG Henyey, L. Wilets, KH Boehm, R. Lelevier, RD Levee: A Method for Automatic Computation of Stellar Evolution. In: Astrophysical Journal . 129: 628-636 (1959).
  3. ↑ LG Henyey, Robert Lelevier, RD Levée: The Early Phases of Stellar Evolution. In: Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Vol. 67 (1955), No. 396, pp. 154-160.
  4. ^ Steven W. Stahler: Understanding Young Stars: A History. In: Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 100: 1474-1485 (1988).
personal data
SURNAME Henyey, Louis G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henyey, Louis George (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American astrophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH McKees Rocks , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH 18th February 1970
Place of death Berkeley , California