Paul Ledoux (astronomer)

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Paul Ledoux (born August 8, 1914 in Forrières , † October 6, 1988 ) was a Belgian astronomer and astrophysicist.

Ledoux studied physics at the University of Liège from 1933 to 1937 . In 1939 he went to Oslo, where Svein Rosseland introduced him to questions about the structure and stability of stars. After the occupation of Norway by the German army in 1940, he first went to Stockholm and then traveled through Siberia to the USA. There he became an employee of the Yerkes Observatory . There he met the astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar , with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

In 1941 he joined the Belgian armed forces in Great Britain and then worked there and in North Africa as a meteorologist for the Royal Air Force. After his discharge from the army, he submitted his dissertation in Liège and then returned to the Yerkes Observatory for a year. From 1947 he worked for the meteorological service of the National Aviation Administration of Belgium, from 1949 he taught at the University of Liège, where he was professor of astronomy, astrophysics, analytical mechanics, geodesy, hydrodynamics and meteorology from 1959.

He was particularly concerned with variable stars and their stability.

From 1972 to 1975 Ledoux was President of the Obersing Program Committee of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), from 1981 to 1985 a member of the ESO Council . He was awarded the Prix ​​Francqui (1964), the Prix ​​décennal des Mathématiques appliquées (1968), the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1972) and the Médaille J. Jansen of the Académie des Sciences . On August 29, 2015, an asteroid was named after him: (13525) Paulledoux .

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personal data
SURNAME Ledoux, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian astronomer and astrophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Forrières
DATE OF DEATH October 6, 1988