Robert Grant Aitken

Robert Grant Aitken ( born December 31, 1864 in Jackson, California, USA, † October 29, 1951 in Berkeley, California ) was an American astronomer.

Life

Between 1895 and 1935 worked R. G. Aitken at the Lick Observatory in California, its director from 1930 to 1935.

He was dedicated to the observation of double stars, of which he discovered 3,100 new pairs. In 1923 he discovered a faint companion of Mira. His major work, which he created together with William Joseph Hussey (1862-1926), is the two-volume " New General Catalogue of Double Stars within 120 degrees of the North Pole". It contains information about 17,180 double stars, and was published in 1932. A second important publication was "The Binary Stars" of 1918 (second, expanded edition 1935).

In addition to his publications extent and he calculated the orbits of comets, moons and asteroids.

In 1932 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. A minor planet (No. 3070 ) and a crater on the back of our Moon are named after him.

Works

• Aitken, RG "Life on Other Worlds, " Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 5, 291 (1911 )