Halton Arp
Halton Arp Christian ( born March 21, 1927 in New York; † December 28, 2013 in Munich) was an American astronomer.
Life and work
Arp studied at Harvard University (BA, 1949), by Harlow Shapley, the man who had measured the size of our Milky Way, and from there he went to Los Angeles to the CalTech ( Ph.D., 1953) to Edwin Hubble. He was then in 1953 Researcher of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, for which he conducted research at the Mount Wilson Observatory and at Mount Palomar Observatium.
In 1955 he was a research assistant at Indiana University in 1957 and an employee of the Mount Palomar Observatiums, where he had worked for 29 years.
Arp was known for the controversial theory that does not show the redshifts of astronomical objects such as quasars very large distances. He presented one of the foundations of the Big Bang theory in question. He also represented an alternative theory of gravitation in the sense of Le Sage gravitation.
Although Arp whether his theory received much criticism, its consequence was also praised. So said the former head of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Rudolf Kippenhahn to Arp:
"We need people like him, otherwise there is a risk that form in the science cliques that do not allow outside criticism. "
As Halton Arp fell out of favor at the Palomar Observatory, Kippenhahn, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics ( MPA ) in Garching near Munich, initiated in the eighties, Arp got a scholarship to Munich. In 1983, Halton Arp was performed as an unpaid guest scientist at the MPA.
Arp also compiled a catalog of unusual galaxies, the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.