Wikipedia

Willem de Sitter

"de Sitter" redirects here. For other uses, see de Sitter (disambiguation).
In this Dutch name, the surname is De Sitter, not Sitter.
In this article, we use Dutch capitalization for the tussenvoegsels in Dutch family names. The first letter in De Sitter is capitalized unless it is preceded by a name, initial or title of nobility.

Willem de Sitter (6 May 1872 – 20 November 1934) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. The De Sitter universe is a cosmological model named after him.

Willem de Sitter
Born(1872-05-06)6 May 1872
Sneek, Friesland, Netherlands
Died20 November 1934(1934-11-20) (aged 62)
Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands
NationalityDutch
Alma materGroningen University
Known forde Sitter Universe
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
Doctoral advisorJacobus Kapteyn[1]
Doctoral studentsDirk Brouwer
Willem Hendrik van den Bos
Signature

Life and work

edit

Born in Sneek, De Sitter studied mathematics at the University of Groningen and then joined the Groningen astronomical laboratory. He worked at the Cape Observatory in South Africa (1897–1899). Then, in 1908, De Sitter was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Leiden University. He was director of the Leiden Observatory from 1919 until his death.

De Sitter made major contributions to the field of physical cosmology. He co-authored a paper with Albert Einstein in 1932 in which they discussed the implications of cosmological data for the curvature of the universe. He also came up with the concept of the De Sitter space and De Sitter universe, a solution for Einstein's general relativity in which there is no matter and a positive cosmological constant. This results in an exponentially expanding, empty universe. De Sitter was also well-known for his research on the motions of the moons of Jupiter, invited to give the George Darwin Lecture at the Royal Astronomical Society in 1931.[2]

Willem de Sitter died after a brief illness in November 1934.[3][4][5]

Honours

edit

In 1912, he became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[6]

Awards

edit

Named after him

edit

Family

edit

One of his sons, Ulbo de Sitter (1902 – 1980), was a Dutch geologist, and one of Ulbo's sons was a Dutch sociologist Ulbo de Sitter (1930 – 2010).

Another son of Willem, Aernout de Sitter (1905 – 15 September 1944[7]), was the director of the Bosscha Observatory in Lembang, Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies), where he studied the Messier 4 globular cluster.

Selected publications

edit
 
Albert Einstein, Paul Ehrenfest, Willem de Sitter, Arthur Eddington, and Hendrik Lorentz in Leiden (1923)
  • De Sitter, W. (1911). "On the bearing of the Principle of Relativity on Gravitational Astronomy" . Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 71 (5): 388–415. doi:10.1093/mnras/71.5.388. hdl:2027/mdp.39015019246357.
  • De Sitter, W. (1913). "A proof of the constancy of the velocity of light" . Proceedings of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 15 (II): 1297–1298. Bibcode:1913KNAB...15.1297D.
  • "On the constancy of the velocity of light" . Proceedings of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 16 (I): 395–396. 1913.
  • De Sitter, W. (1913). "Über die Genauigkeit, innerhalb welcher die Unabhängigkeit der Lichtgeschwindigkeit von der Bewegung der Quelle behauptet werden kann"  [On the accuracy within which the independence of the speed of light from the motion of the source can be asserted]. Physikalische Zeitschrift. 14: 1267. Bibcode:1913PhyZ...14.1267D.

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ Willem de Sitter at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ de Sitter, Willem (1931). "Jupiter's Galilean satellites (George Darwin Lecture)". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 91: 706–738. Bibcode:1931MNRAS..91..706D. doi:10.1093/mnras/91.7.706.
  3. ^ Obituary Notes of Astronomers at www.astro.uni-bonn.de
  4. ^ 1947BAN....10..287D Page 287 at articles.adsabs.harvard.edu
  5. ^ Adriaan, Blaauw (2004). "My Cruise Through the World of Astronomy". Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. 42 (1): 1–37. Bibcode:2004ARA&A..42....1B. doi:10.1146/annurev.astro.42.053102.134020.
  6. ^ "Willem de Sitter (1872 - 1934)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
  7. ^ Obituary Notes of Astronomers at www.astro.uni-bonn.de
edit
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Willem de Sitter.
 
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Willem de Sitter
 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Willem de Sitter.

Obituaries

edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Willem_de_Sitter&oldid=1259015352"