Luigi Giuseppe Jacchia
Luigi Giuseppe Jacchia (born June 4, 1910 in Trieste , † May 8, 1996 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an Italian-American astronomer .
Life
Jacchia received her PhD in physics from the University of Bologna in 1932 . He then worked there as a lecturer in astronomy and observed variable stars with the 15 cm telescope in Bologna and later with the 60 cm telescope in Loiano . In 1938 he was dismissed due to the fascist race laws and emigrated to the USA, where he got a position at the Harvard College Observatory . During the Second World War , he worked for the United States Office of War Information with his excellent language skills . After the war he worked again at Harvard College Observatory, from 1949 to 1953 also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . In 1956 Fred Whipple brought him to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory , which had been relocated from Washington to Cambridge and was reorganized , which had shifted its research focus from solar physics to space research. Jacchia stayed there until his retirement in 1980 and mainly dealt with studies and models of the earth's atmosphere.
Services
During his time in Bologna and the first few years in the USA, Jacchia was mainly concerned with variable stars, which he studied over long periods of time. He was an active contributor to the American Association of Variable Star Observers and wrote Le Stelle Variabili (1933) and The Story of Variable Stars (1941, together with Leon Campbell ), two comprehensive works on these objects.
At the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, he shifted his research to the field of geophysics and atmospheric physics . He was involved in the organization of the International Geophysical Year 1957/1958 and developed programs to study the density and composition of the upper atmosphere from the effects it exerted on the movement of artificial satellites. He succeeded in determining the density and temperature fluctuations of the upper layers of the earth's atmosphere and their dependence on the rotation and activity of the sun by observing the trajectories of meteorites and artificial satellites. His atmospheric models, which he continuously refined and in which he took seasonal and time-of-day fluctuations into account, became international standards.
Honors
- Smithsonian Institution Hodgkins Medal, 1980
- Naming of the asteroid (2079) Jacchia after him
literature
- Michael Saladyga: Jacchia, Luigi Giuseppe. In: Thomas Hockey et al. (Ed.): Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers , Springer, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-4419-9916-0 , p. 1101. doi : 10.1007 / 978-1-4419-9917-7_706
- James Cornell: Luigi G. Jacchia, 1911-1996. In: Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Volume 28 (1996), pp. 1452-1453 bibcode : 1996BAAS ... 28.1452C ( online )
- Leonida Rosino: Luigi Giuseppe Jacchia (1910-1996). In: Giornale di Astronomia, Volume 23 (1997), p. 54 ( PDF; 2.73 MB )
Individual evidence
- ^ Lutz D. Schmadel: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . 6th edition. Springer, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-29717-5 , p. 161 . doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-642-29718-2
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jacchia, Luigi Giuseppe |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian-American astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 4, 1910 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Trieste |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 8, 1996 |
| Place of death | Cambridge , Massachusetts |