Hermann Brück

Hermann Alexander Brück ( born August 15, 1905 in Berlin, † March 4, 2000 in Edinburgh ) was a German astronomer.

Life

Brück went in Berlin- Charlottenburg to school and studied from 1924 at the University of Kiel, the University of Bonn and the Ludwig- Maximilians- University of Munich, where he received his doctorate in physics under Arnold Sommerfeld in 1928, with a dissertation on the wave mechanics of crystals. Then he turned to astronomy and went to the Astrophysical Observatory Potsdam with his friend Albrecht Unsold, who also earned his doctorate under Sommerfeld. At the same time he attended the Physics Colloquium at the University of Berlin, at the time physicists such as Albert Einstein and Max von Laue had.

Due to the political situation, he left Germany in 1936 and was an assistant at the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo. The theologian Romano Guardini and John Pinsk took it together this year in the Catholic Church. The following year he went to the University of Cambridge to Arthur Eddington. He was Assistant Director of the Observatory of Cambridge and John Couch Adams Astronomer. His specialty was the suns spectroscopy. He added, for example, the Utrecht Solar Atlas.

In 1947 he went as a director of Dunsink Observatory in Dublin, which was the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies assigned to the Erwin Schrödinger led the Theoretical Physics. In 1957 he moved to the University of Edinburgh as Regius Professor of Astronomy and headed the Royal Observatory (as Astronomer Royal of Scotland). There automated observation methods were ( in the early years ) Vincent Reddish Cartledge and Peter Fellgett in Stellarspektroskopie developed ( with automatic scanning of the spectra and conversion to computer - readable tape ) and remote control of telescopes. He made ​​Edinburgh a center of technological development of observational astronomy. For the observation, he used his international contacts, especially to Rome ( with a Schmidt telescope at Monte Porzio at Rome 1967) and the University also used a Schmidt telescope at Siding Spring in Australia. He was involved in the establishment of assisted from Greenwich Observatory telescope in La Palma and the establishment of supervised Edinburgh 4 m infrared telescope on Hawaii. He set up a course in astronomy and founded as a student in Cambridge Astronomical Society. He was temporarily Dean and went into retirement in 1975.

He was married to Mary Conway, who worked as an astronomer with him. She also taught in Edinburgh until her retirement in 1984. Together with his wife he wrote a biography of Charles Piazzi Smyth (1988 ) and the history of astronomy in Edinburgh ( 1983).

He was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Royal Irish Academy (1948 ), the Royal Society of Edinburgh ( 1958) and the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature ( 1955). In 1966 he was CBE. He was Grand Cross Knight of St Gregory. He was an honorary Doctor of the University (1973 ) (1972 ) St. Andrews and the National University of Ireland.

Writings

• With Mary Brück: The peripatetic astronomer: The life of Charles Piazzi Smyth, Adam Hilger 1988
• The story of astronomy in Edinburgh: from its beginning until 1975, Edinburgh University Press 1983