Related papers: In Memoriam Cornelis de Jager
The primary task of the Debrecen Heliophysical Observatory (DHO) was to produce the detailed and reliable photographic documentation of the solar photospheric activity since 1958. This long-term effort resulted in various solar catalogues…
DGRAV News: We hear that.... DGRAV Student Travel Grants Town Hall Meeting GRG Society Research Briefs: What's new in LIGO Conference Reports: Christodoulou Conference Obituaries: Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) Joseph Polchinski (1954-2018)
Paper in honour of Michel Henon, based on a talk presented at Institut Henri Poincare, Paris, 5 Decembre 2013.
We provide a brief biography of seven French astronomers and physicists and of a Russian astronomer from the 19th and 20th centuries. Roger Bouigue (1920-) was the director of Toulouse Observatory in the 1960s. Claude-Louis Mathieu…
This is a brief history of discovery and later study of Kummer surfaces. The article is based on the author's Oliver Club talk at Cornell University on October 10, 2019 delivered exactly 101 years since the first talk at the club given by…
Cornelis Easton (1864-1929) became a journalist and newspaper editor. During most of his career he was active as an amateur astronomer and contributed important papers in international astronomical journals This concerned three areas. The…
In 1614 Johann Georg Locher, a student of the Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner, proposed a physical mechanism to explain how the Earth could orbit the sun. An orbit, Locher said, is a perpetual fall. He proposed this despite the fact…
The discovery of cosmic rays, a milestone in science, was based on the work by scientists in Europe and the New World and took place during a period characterised by nationalism and lack of communication. Many scientists that took part in…
Seventy-five years ago, Bernardo Dessau passed away. He had been the sole professor of Physics at the University of Perugia for thirty years. With this brief contribution we intend to repay a debt of gratitude, first of all because his…
John N. Bahcall championed solar neutrino physics for many years. Thanks to his pioneering and long-lasting contributions, this field of research has not only reached maturity, but has also opened a new window on physics beyond the standard…
The heliosphere represents a uniquely accessible domain of space, where fundamental physical processes common to solar, astrophysical and laboratory plasmas can be studied under conditions impossible to reproduce on Earth and unfeasible to…
Phillip L. Geissler made important contributions to the statistical mechanics of biological polymers, heterogeneous materials, and chemical dynamics in aqueous environments. He devised analytical and computational methods that revealed the…
Egbert Brieskorn died on July 11, 2013, a few days after his 77th birthday. He was an impressive personality who has left a lasting impression on all who knew him, whether inside or outside of mathematics. Brieskorn was a great…
The NASA Kepler mission -in flight since March 2009- is producing an enormous number of high-quality continuous light curves. Now, and for the first time ever, we are able to do ensemble asteroseismology, i.e., to do an asteroseismic…
Henri Deslandres initiated imaging spectroscopy of the solar atmosphere in 1892 at Paris observatory. He invented, concurrently with George Hale in Kenwood (USA) but quite independently, the spectroheliograph designed for monochromatic…
Obituary for Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Helmut Karzel, who passed away on June 22, 2021, at the age of 93.
Keith Brueckner was a theoretical physicist of considerable technical power who came of age as the mysteries of the atomic nucleus were coming into focus. His fundamental contributions to the "many-body problem" had a lasting impact on our…
The mathematical achievements of Harry Kesten since the mid-1950s have revolutionized probability theory as a subject in its own right and in its associations with aspects of algebra, analysis, geometry, and statistical physics. Through his…
A scientific biography of John Ward, who was responsible for the Ward Identity in quantum electrodynamics; the first detailed calculation of the quantum entanglement of two photons in electron-positron annihilation with Maurice Pryce; the…
A portrait of Kurt Goedel with emphasis on his work on relativity theory and idealistic philosophy.