Biographical Memoirs Volume 62 (1993) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 259-277
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From page 259... ...
What is the nature of the atmospheres and the surfaces of the planets in the contemporary solar system, and what have been their evolutionary histories? These were the ciriving intellectual questions that inspired Gerard Kuiper's life of observational study of stellar evolution, the properties of star systems, and the physics and chemistry of the Sun's family of planets.
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From page 260... ...
Bart J Bok recallecl the clay they met as incoming students in the library of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
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From page 261... ...
He had delayed publication of his thesis until he could improve the observational ciata for double stars with large differences in brightness between the components. Observing visual doubles with the 12- and 36-inch refractors and making color-index measurements with the Crossley 36-inch reflector, he discovered numerous binaries and many white dwarf stars.
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From page 262... ...
Eventually, Kuiper announced that at least 50 percent of the nearest stars are binaries or multiple-star systems. He more clearly defined the mass-luminosity relation for main-sequence stars and showed that the white dwarfs are high-mass objects departing from the empirical law.
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From page 263... ...
Bok has noted that Kuiper's marriage and appointment at Yerkes Observatory were strong positive stimuli to his scientific work in the late 1930s and 1940s. In his new post Kuiper worked with Struve and Stromgren on the eclipsing binary Epsilon Aurigae, proposing in a major joint paper in 1937 that a large star surrounded by a partly transparent gas halo eclipses an F supergiant whose ultraviolet radiation has ionized part of the larger star's tenuous atmosphere.
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From page 264... ...
with the new instrument ancT its high-quality spectrographs, Kuiper continued his search for white dwarfs and spectroscopic studies of stars with large proper motions. He took up residence at the remote observing site in west Texas cluring the breaking-in period of the 82-inch telescope and began to acquire ciata on stars that had been too faint for the telescopes previously available to him.
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From page 265... ...
, then director of Lick Observatory, "The only reason ~ happened to observe the planets and the 10 brightest satellites was that they were nicely lined up in a region of the sky where hac! run out of program stars (stars of large proper motion ant!
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From page 266... ...
the groundwork for the study of planetary atmospheres for the next quarter of a century. Between 1946 and the 1980s the near-infrared spectral resolution increased more than 100,000-foIcI, with a corresponding improvement in knowledge of planetary and stellar atmospheres.
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From page 267... ...
With his own energetic self-motivation, and in the atmosphere of selfless service to science inspirer! by Otto Struve at Yerkes, Kuiper worked with great intensity on his science and in influencing the directions of the Yerkes and McDonald observatories.
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From page 268... ...
In a systematic search for outer and inner satellites of the planets, he found Herein, the second moon of Neptune, in May 1949. Succeeding his Tong-time friend Otto Struve, Kuiper became director of Yerkes and McDonalc!
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From page 269... ...
Gehrels had been given a student assistantship in 1952 with the formiciable task of determining the brightnesses of the asteroids on- the huge volume of photographic plates taken at McDonald Observatory. This work was the precursor to the later Palomar-Leiclen survey to magnitude 20.5, from which essential statistical information on the asteroid population was clerivec3.
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From page 270... ...
His stud1 ~ ies of the time scale of formation on the lunar surface features attracted wide attention ant! generated a heated debate with Harold Urey in the pages of the Proceedings.
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From page 271... ...
GERARD PETER KUIPER 271 When Stromgren resigned as director of Yerkes and McDonald observatories in 1957, Kuiper was elected to the position for a seconc! time, and it was in the next year, as a summer assistant at Yerkes, that ~ had my first contact with him.
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From page 272... ...
What follows is my own view of the state of affairs, gleaned from conversations with those involved anct those who viewed the situation from outside the Yerkes staff. Otto Strove, the harcI-ciriving and autocratic director of Yerkes Observatory, hac!
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From page 273... ...
Those very few astronomers who applied the developing observational 1 ~7 techniques to the planets did so in a very low key throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It was Gerard Kuiper who endeavored to return the physical study of the solar system to respectability on the strength of his own reputation, previously established in stellar studies, and through application of infrared techniques to the study of planetary atmospheres.
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From page 274... ...
No time was lost in putting the new instrument to work on the McDonald 82-inch telescope ant! on the recently completed 36-inch telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory.
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From page 275... ...
In 1963 came the Rectified Lunar Atlas, during the preparation of which Kuiper and Hartmann cliscoverecl
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From page 276... ...
In 1967 and 196S, he conducted a program to make an atlas of the infrared solar spectrum at high resolution above most of the atmosphere. The atlas was published in ten articles in the Communications.
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From page 277... ...
Gerard Kuiper was a demancling inclividual who thrived on a Laity routine of hare! work and long hours, and he expected the same from his subordinates anct associates.
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