Paul ten Bruggencate

Paul ten Bruggencate ( born February 24, 1901 in Arosa, Switzerland, † September 14, 1961 ) was a German astronomer and director of the University Observatory Göttingen.

Ten Bruggencate was the son of a Dutch lawyer and went to Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany to school. He studied astronomy at the University of Göttingen and the University of Munich, where he received his doctorate in 1924 at Hugo von Seeliger on the structure and formation of globular clusters. After that, he was assistant from 1924 by Hans Kienle at the University of Göttingen observatory, where he devoted himself to continue with the subject of his dissertation and Kienle together with the expansion of spectrophotometry, following preparatory work by Karl Schwarzschild and Hans Rosenberg. 1926 to 1929 he was abroad, first two years at the Bosscha Sterrenwacht to Lembang on Java ( where he variable stars, Cepheids observed with Dutchman Joan haunch ) at Mount Wilson Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. After that he was in Greifswald, where in 1929 he completed his habilitation and became a lecturer. He headed from 1931, the Astronomical and Mathematical Institute, which was spun off from the Institute of Physics. From 1935 he was Hauptobservator the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam, where he worked at the solar observatory in the Einstein Tower and the solar astronomy turned, in collaboration with Walter Grotrian and Harald Klüber ( 1901-1978 ).

In 1941 he became director of the University of Göttingen observatory ( and Professor of Astronomy ), where he built on the Hainberg a solar observatory (which was at that time due to possible interference of the radio broadcast by solar flares also of military interest ), which was commissioned in 1944. In Germany he was in it to compete with Karl- Otto Kiepenheuer.

With the support of his Göttingen successor Hans -Heinrich Voigt he built in the 1950s on another solar observatory in a more favorable position for observation in Locarno, which began the observations shortly after his death.

In 1948 he issued the band Astronomy and Astrophysics of the FIAT Reviews of German Science, and in 1952 the sub-band astronomy of Landolt- Bornstein.

1958 to 1961 he was president of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. He was also Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and rector of the University of Göttingen. He was Chairman of the Council of West German Observatories and the board of the Astronomical Society from 1957 to 1960 its chairman. In 1959 he was elected a member of the Scholars Academy Leopoldina.

A lunar crater is named after him.

Writings

• Star clusters. Its construction, their position relative to the star system and its significance for cosmogony. Scientific monographs and textbooks, Volume 7, Springer, 1927.
• Participation in Müller- Pouillet physics textbook. 11th Edition, Volume 5, 2nd half of the physics of the cosmos. 1928.
• Spectrophotometric studies of δ Cephei stars. Offizin Poeschel & Trepte, Leipzig 1931.
• The variable stars. Results of the Exact Sciences, Volume 10, Springer, 1931.
• The astronomical world view of the present. Kohlhammerstraße 1934.
• Th Bruggencate and others: Astronomy, astrophysics and cosmogony. Office of Military Government for Germany, Field Information Agencies Technical ( FIAT ), 1948.