Peter van de Kamp

Peter van de Kamp ( born December 26, 1901 as Piet van de Kamp; † 18 May 1995) was a Dutch- American astronomer. He became known through studies of Barnard's star.

Van de Kamp lived from 1923 in the United States. He worked first at the McCormick Observatory, later at the Lick Observatory. In 1925 he received his doctorate. He then returned to the McCormick Observatory.

In 1937 he became director of the Sproul Observatory of Swarthmore College. Here began the astrometry specialist to observe the motion of Barnard's star. In the 1960s he reported from periodic fluctuations ( " wobbles ") in the proper motion of the star, which he attributed similar to our planets Jupiter and Saturn in one or two planetary companion with a mass. Later it turned out that the cause of these variations must be attributed to systematic instrumental errors.

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