Peter van de Kamp

Peter van de Kamp (* 26. December 1901 in Kampen as Piet van de Kamp ; † 18th May 1995 in Amsterdam ) was a Dutch-American astronomer. He became known through research on Barnard's star .

Van de Kamp lived in the USA from 1923 . He worked there first at the McCormick Observatory , later at the Lick Observatory . In 1925 he received his doctorate. He then returned to the McCormick Observatory.

In 1937 he became director of the Sproul Observatory at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia . This is where the astrometry specialist, who mainly worked on determining star parallaxes , began to observe the movement of Barnard's star. In the 1960s he reported periodic fluctuations ("wobbles") in the star's proper motion , which he attributed to one or two planetary companions with a mass similar to our planets Jupiter and Saturn. It later emerged that these fluctuations were caused by systematic instrumental errors. In 1974 he postulated the existence of an invisible companion with the star Epsilon Eridani .

Awards

• 1979: The asteroid (1965) van de Kamp was named after Peter van de Kamp.
• 1982: Jules Janssen Prize

literature

• Schilling, G .: Peter van de Kamp and His "Lovely Barnard's Star". Astronomy 13: 26-28.
• Van de Kamp, Peter. (1969): Alternate dynamical analysis of Barnard's star. Astronomical Journal 74 (8): 757.
• Van de Kamp, Peter. (1982): The planetary system of Barnard's star. Vistas in Astronomy 26 (2): 141. doi : 10.1016 / 0083-6656 (82) 90004-6 .

Web links

• Publications by P. van de Kamp in the Astrophysics Data System
• Obituaries for P. van de Kamp in the Astrophysics Data System