Jan oort education

Dutch astronomer cloud
Jan Hendrik Oort ForMemRS was a Dutch astronomer who made significant contributions to the understanding of the Milky Way and who was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy.
Dutch astronomer who was one of the most important figures in 20th-century efforts to understand the nature of the Milky Way Galaxy.

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Jan Hendrik Oort: Comet pioneer

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27/02/200416296 views81 likes

ESA / About Us / ESA history

Not many people have their name displayed in lights. Even fewer have heavenly objects named after them. One of this select few was a Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort (1900-1992).

By the time of his death, at the age of 92, Professor Oort was recognised as one of the greatest astronomers of the 20th century. Both an observer and a theorist, Oort revolutionised astronomy through his ground-breaking discoveries.

While still in his twenties, Oort had already shaken the scientific world by demonstrating that the Milky Way rotates like a giant ‘Catherine Wheel’.

He pointed out that each of the 100 000 million stars in our Galaxy was travelling independently through space. Those closer to the centre must rotate much faster than those further away, just as the innermost planets travel much faster around the Sun than the furthest ones like Neptune. In the case of the Sun, one trip around the Galaxy takes about 220 million years to complete.

He also shifted the Sun from the cen

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Jan Oort has left a significant impact on the field of astronomy, and his work is still relevant to this day. His discovery of the rotation of the Milky Way changed the way we look at the universe and his discovery of dark matter. These discoveries paved the way for modern astrophysics and cosmology, particularly in the large-scale structure of galaxies. Oort's early work on galactic rotation and stellar dynamics in the early 1930s paved the way for galactic astronomy's development.

After the Second World War, Oort played a leading role in the emergence of radio astronomy, which provided new ways of studying the cosmos. He was involved in the construction of the Dwingeloo and Westerbork radio telescopes and, therefore, contributed to developing the Netherlands as a nation with a solid focus on astronomy. The 21-centimeter hydrogen line, which Oort and his group established, enabled a much more detailed charting of the structure of the Milky Way. This work can be a basis for further investigation of galaxy formation and its activity.

Oort is also known for his work on comets. His

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Jan Oort

Jan Hendrik OortFRS^[1] (28 April 1900 – 5 November 1992) was a Dutchastronomer.

Oort made significant contributions to understanding the Milky Way,^[2] and was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy.^[3] His New York Times obituary called him “one of the century's foremost explorers of the universe”.^[4] The European Space Agency website describes him as, “one of the greatest astronomers of the 20th century”, and says he “revolutionised astronomy through his ground-breaking discoveries”.^[5]

In 1955, Oort’s name appeared in Life Magazine’s list of the 100 most famous living people. He has been described as “putting the Netherlands in the forefront of postwar astronomy”.^[4]

Oort proved that the Milky Way rotates. Finding that the visible mass was not enough to explain the rotation, he suggested the existence of invisible dark matter, in 1932. This is now thought to make up aboout 84.5% of the total matter in the Universe. Its gravitational pull causes “the clustering of stars into galaxies and galaxies int