Gerard Kuiper

Gerard Peter Kuiper (/ˈkaɪpər/ KY-pər; born Gerrit Pieter Kuiper, Dutch: [ˈɣɛrɪt ˈpitər ˈkœypər]; 7 December 1905 – 23 December 1973) was a Dutch astronomer, planetary scientist, selenographer, author and professor. The Kuiper belt is named after him.

Kuiper is considered by many to be the father of modern planetary science.

Kuiper, the son of a tailor in the village of Tuitjenhorn in North Holland, had an early interest in astronomy. He had extraordinarily sharp eyesight, allowing him to see with the naked eye magnitude 7.5 stars, about four times fainter than those visible to normal eyes.

He studied at Leiden University in 1924, where at the time a very large number of astronomers had congregated. He befriended fellow students Bart Bok and Pieter Oosterhoff, and was taught by Ejnar Hertzsprung, Antonie Pannekoek, Willem de Sitter, Jan Woltjer, Jan Oort, and the physicist Paul Ehrenfest. He received his candidate degree in Astronomy in 1927 and continued straight on with his graduate studies.

Kuiper received his PhD degree from Leiden University in the Netherlands on his thesis on binary stars with Hertzsprung in 1933.

He traveled to California to become a fellow under Robert Grant Aitken at the Lick Observatory. In 1935 he left to work at the Harvard College Observatory, where he met Sarah Parker Fuller (1913-2000), whom he married on 20 June 1936. Although he had planned to move to Java to work at the Bosscha Observatory, he took a position at Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago and received American citizenship in 1937.

From 1947 to 1949, Kuiper served as the director of the Yerkes Observatory, as well as the McDonald Observatory in west Texas. In 1949, Kuiper initiated the Yerkes–McDonald asteroid survey (1950–1952).

From 1950-1960 he was professor at the University of Chicago, and from 1957 to 1959, Kuiper once again served as the director of the Yerkes and McDonald Observatories.