Paul ten Bruggencate

Paul ten Bruggencate (born February 24, 1901 in Arosa , Switzerland , † September 14, 1961 in Göttingen ) was a German astronomer and head of the Göttingen University Observatory .

Ten Bruggencate was the son of a Dutch lawyer and went to school in Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. He studied astronomy at the University of Göttingen and the University of Munich , where he received his doctorate in 1924 under Hugo von Seeliger on the structure and formation of globular clusters. Then from 1924 he was Hans Kienle's assistant at the Göttingen University Observatory, where he continued with the topic of his dissertation and together with Kienle with the expansion of spectrophotometry after preliminary work by Karl Schwarzschild and Hans Rosenberg . From 1926 to 1929 he was abroad, initially for two years at the Bosscha Sterrenwacht on Lembang on Java , where he observed variable stars, Cepheids , with the Dutchman Joan Voute , at the Mount Wilson Observatory and at the Harvard College Observatory. He then went to Greifswald , where he completed his habilitation in 1929 and became a lecturer. From 1931 he headed the Astronomical-Mathematical Institute, which was spun off from the Physical Institute. From 1935 he was the main observator at the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam , where he worked at the solar observatory in the Einstein Tower and turned to solar astronomy in collaboration with Walter Grotrian and Harald von Klüber .

In 1941 he became director of the university observatory and full professor of astronomy in Göttingen, where he built a solar observatory on the Hainberg, which went into operation in 1944 and was of military interest at that time due to possible interference with radio transmission from solar flares. In Germany he was in competition with Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer .

With the support of his Göttingen successor, Hans-Heinrich Voigt , he built another solar observatory in Locarno in the 1950s in a more favorable location , which began the observations shortly after his death.

In 1948 he published the volume Astronomy and Astrophysics of the FIAT Reviews of German Science and in 1952 the sub-volume Astronomy by Landolt-Börnstein .

From 1958 to 1961 he was President of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen , of which he had been a member since 1943. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and Rector of the University of Göttingen. He was chairman of the council of West German observatories and on the board of the Astronomical Society and from 1957 to 1960 its chairman. In 1959 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy .

The Ten Bruggencate lunar crater is named after him.

Fonts

Star clusters. Their structure, their position in relation to the star system and their significance for cosmogony. Scientific monographs and textbooks, Volume 7. Springer, 1927.
Contribution to Müller-Pouillet textbook of physics. 11th edition, 5th volume, 2nd half Physics of the Cosmos. 1928.
Spectrophotometric studies of δ-Cephei stars. Offizin Poeschel & Trepte, Leipzig 1931.
The variable stars. Results of the exact natural sciences, Volume 10. Springer 1931.
The astronomical worldview of the present. Kohlhammer 1934.
ten Bruggencate and others: Astronomy, astrophysics and cosmogony. Office of Military Government for Germany, Field Information Agencies Technical (FIAT), 1948.

Web links

Literature by and about Paul ten Bruggencate in the catalog of the German National Library
Publications by P. ten Bruggencate in the Astrophysics Data System
Obituary in the communications of the Astronomical Society by FW Jäger, bibcode : 1962MitAG..15 ... 21J

Remarks

↑ officially, but due to illness, this was taken over by Hans Kienle . See Kienle: Obituary for Bruggencate. In: Natural Sciences. Volume 49, Issue 4, 1962
↑ Personal disputes prevented cooperation. Michael Seiler: A matter of command, the sun god. History of German solar research in the Third Reich and under Allied occupation. In: Acta Historica Astronomiae. Volume 31. German, 2007, p. 78. Bruggencate was a member of the NSDAP and the SA since 1933 and was able to fall back on good connections to Abraham Esau in promoting research in National Socialist Germany .

↑ 1985 the Teide Observatory in Tenerife became its successor. The observatory in Locarno was closed and the telescope was transferred to Tenerife.

↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , pp. 15, 50.

personal data
SURNAME	Bruggencate, Paul ten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH	February 24, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Arosa , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH	September 14, 1961
Place of death	Goettingen

[1] y, but due to illness, this was taken over by Hans Kienle . See Kienle: Obituary for Bruggencate. In: Natural Sciences. Volume 49, Issue 4, 1962

[2] Personal disputes prevented cooperation. Michael Seiler: A matter of command, the sun god. History of German solar research in the Third Reich and under Allied occupation. In: Acta Historica Astronomiae. Volume 31. German, 2007, p. 78. Bruggencate was a member of the NSDAP and the SA since 1933 and was able to fall back on good connections to Abraham Esau in promoting research in National Socialist Germany .

[3] 1985 the Teide Observatory in Tenerife became its successor. The observatory in Locarno was closed and the telescope was transferred to Tenerife.

[4] Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , pp. 15, 50.