Rudolph Minkowski AKA Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski Born: 28-May-1895 Birthplace: Strasbourg, France Died: 4-Jan-1976 Location of death: Berkeley, CA Cause of death: unspecified
Gender: Male Religion: Christian Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Astronomer, Physicist Nationality: United States Executive summary: Galaxies in collision Military service: German Army (WWI, 1914-18) Astrophysicist Rudolph Minkowski identified and interpreted cosmic radio sources, headed a project to photograph the entire Northern Sky in the 1950s, and worked with Walter Baade to catalogue supernovae. In 1952 his work established that galaxies can collide, and eight years later, on the last night before his retirement from Mount Wilson Observatory in 1960, he used a 200-inch telescope to photograph the collision of two galaxies an estimated 4.8-billion light years from Earth. At the time this was the most distant event ever observed by humanity, and it remained a record until 1976, although present-day equipment can easily view cosmic events from much greater distances. Minkowski's father was pathologist Oskar Minkowski, and his uncle was mathematician Hermann Minkowski. Father: Oskar Minkowski (physician-researcher) Mother: Marie Johanna Siegel Minkowski (m. 1894) Sister: Laure Minkowski Wife: Luise David Minkowski (m. 23-Aug-1926, d. 1978) Daughter: Eva Minkowski Thomas Son: Herman Minkowski
High School: Breslau Gymnasium, Wroclaw, Poland University: PhD Physics, University of Wroclaw (1921) Teacher: Physics, University of Wroclaw (1921-22) Teacher: Physics, University of Göttingen (1922) Teacher: Physics, University of Hamburg (1922-35) Scholar: Mt. Wilson Observatory (1935-60) Professor: Astrophysics, University of California at Berkeley (1960-76)
Bruce Medal 1961 National Academy of Sciences Royal Astronomical Society Naturalized US Citizen Lunar Crater Minkowski (named for Minkowski and his uncle, Hermann Minkowski) Asteroid Namesake 11770 Rudominkowski German Ancestry
Jewish Ancestry
Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript.
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
Copyright ©2019 Soylent Communications
|