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Willem de Sitter

Willem de Sitter (6 May 1872 – 20 November 1934) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer.

"de Sitter" redirects here. For other uses, see de Sitter (disambiguation).

Willem de Sitter

(1872-05-06)6 May 1872

20 November 1934(1934-11-20) (aged 62)

Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands

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]

(1929)

James Craig Watson Medal

(1931)

Bruce Medal

(1931)

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society (1934)

Prix Jules Janssen

The crater on the Moon

De Sitter

Asteroid

1686 De Sitter

De Sitter universe

De Sitter space

Anti-de Sitter space

De Sitter invariant special relativity

Einstein–de Sitter universe

De Sitter double star experiment

De Sitter precession

De Sitter–Schwarzschild metric

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.

De Sitter, W. (1911). . Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 71 (5): 388–415. doi:10.1093/mnras/71.5.388. hdl:2027/mdp.39015019246357.

"On the bearing of the Principle of Relativity on Gravitational Astronomy" 

"A proof of the constancy of the velocity of light" 

. Proceedings of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 16 (I): 395–396. 1913.

"On the constancy of the velocity of light" 

De Sitter, W. (1913). [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.

"Über die Genauigkeit, innerhalb welcher die Unabhängigkeit der Lichtgeschwindigkeit von der Bewegung der Quelle behauptet werden kann" 

De Sitter double star experiment

De Sitter precession

De Sitter relativity

De Sitter space

De Sitter universe

Anti-de Sitter space

a story by H. P. Lovecraft featuring de Sitter, and inspired by his lecture The Size of the Universe

The Dreams in the Witch House

P.C. van der Kruit in: History of science and scholarship in the Netherlands.

Willem de Sitter (1872 – 1934)

A. Blaauw, , in Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland.

Sitter, Willem de (1872–1934)

Bruce Medal page

Awarding of Bruce Medal: PASP 43 (1931) 125

Awarding of RAS gold medal: MNRAS 91 (1931) 422

Archived 2009-01-29 at the Wayback Machine (four articles)

de Sitter's binary star arguments against Ritz's relativity theory (1913)