Bengt Strömgren

Bengt Georg Daniel Strömgren ( born January 21, 1908 in Gothenburg, Sweden; † 4 July 1987) was a Danish astronomer and astrophysicist.

Career

His parents were Hedvig Strömgren and Svante Elis Strömgren, professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and director of the observatory in Copenhagen was. Even as a youth focused Bengt Strömgren with astronomical and physical subjects, he also gained experience in the evolving quantum mechanics at the nearby Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics. He studied at the University of Copenhagen in 1929, he completed his doctoral work from there on a subject of celestial mechanics. Strömgrens interests lay in the combination of astronomical observation and mathematical-physical theory, with an emphasis on careful numerical analysis.

In 1936 he began a stay at the University of Chicago and the Yerkes Observatory in the United States, then returned but 1938 back to Denmark where he was appointed professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and in 1940 succeeded his father as head of the Copenhagen observatory was. Due to less state funding, Bengt Strömgren left Denmark in 1951 and became director of the Yerkes Observatory and the McDonald Observatory. Six years later, in 1957, he was appointed senior professor of theoretical astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he took Albert Einstein's office. In 1967 he returned to Denmark where he was director of NORDITA several years. Strömgren was 1948-1955 Secretary General of the International Astronomical Union and its president from 1975 to 1977.

Bengt Strömgren provided invaluable contributions to astrophysics. So he has the chemical ( atomic ) composition of stars more accurately determined, which differed greatly from previous estimates. He examined the physics named after him Strömgren sphere, the H II region is present around a hot star in which all the hydrogen in the ionized form. He developed a photometric system that allowed by clever choice of four bands and the Hβ index, the determination of many properties of hot stars alone from this relatively easy to measure photometry.

Awards

Name honors

• (1846 ) Bengt, an asteroid of the main belt
• Strömgren sphere
• Strömgren photometry, then novel photoelectric photometry four colors

Other Awards