University of Groningen

Willem de Sitter was a Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer. Born in Sneek, De Sitter studied mathematics at the University of Groningen... and then joined the Groningen astronomical laboratory. He worked at the Cape Observatory in South Africa . Then, in 1908, de Sitter was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Leiden University. He was director of the Leiden Observatory from 1919 until his death. De Sitter made major contributions to the field of physical cosmology. He co-authored a paper with Albert Einstein in 1932 in which they argued that there might be large amounts of matter which do not emit light, now commonly referred to as dark matter. He also came up with the concept of the de Sitter space and de Sitter universe, a solution for Einstein's general relativity in which there is no matter and a positive cosmological constant. This results in an exponentially expanding, empty universe. De Sitter was also famous for his research on the planet Jupiter. Willem de Sitter died after a brief illness in November 1934.
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Bart Jan Bok was a Dutch-American astronomer. He was born in the Netherlands, but spent a good deal of his childhood days growing up in what was... then known as the Dutch East Indies. He was educated at the Leiden and Groningen Universities. In 1929 he married fellow astronomer Dr. Priscilla Fairfield Bok, and for the remainder of their lives the two collaborated closely on their astronomical work. They had two children, Joyce and John. From 1929 until 1957 he worked at Harvard University. He then worked as director of Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia for nine years, before returning to the United States as director of Steward Observatory. He became a US citizen in 1938. In 1975 Bok coauthored the statement Objections to Astrology , which was endorsed by 186 professional astronomers, astrophysicists, and other scientists, including nineteen winners of the Nobel Prize. The statement was published in The Humanist. This led to the formation of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, of which he was a founding Fellow.
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Monica Arac de Nyeko is a Ugandan writer of short fiction, poetry, and essays. She was educated at Makerere University and the University of... Groningen. While at Makerere University Arac de Nyeko was an active member of FEMRITE - Uganda Women Writers Association, which she has credited for giving her "a place and space to write with a network of support and mentorship--handy when you are starting out." In 2007 she won the Caine Prize for the story Jambula Tree. The story concerns two teenage girls falling in love and facing an unforgiving community because of it. One of her other noted stories is Strange Fruit, which contains an allusion to the song of the same name.
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Adriaan Blaauw was a Dutch astronomer. Blaauw was born in Amsterdam, and studied at Leiden University and the University of Groningen, obtaining his... doctorate at the latter in 1946. In 1948, he was appointed an associate professor at Leiden. In the 1950s he worked a few years at the Yerkes Observatory, before returning to Europe in 1957 to become director of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen. Blaauw was closely involved in the founding of the European Southern Observatory, and was its general director from 1970 to 1975. In 1975, he returned to the Netherlands, becoming a full professor at Leiden, until his retirement in 1981. From 1976 to 1979, he served as president of the International Astronomical Union. He chaired the committee for assigning scientific priorities for the observing programme of the astrometric satellite Hipparcos. His research has involved star formation, the motions of star clusters and stellar associations, and distance scale. His main contributions are the explanation of the origin of stars that move with high velocity in our galaxy and the description of star formation in associations.
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Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, was a Dutch astronomer, best known for his extensive studies of the Milky Way and as the first discoverer of evidence for... galactic rotation. Kapteyn was born in Barneveld, and went to the University of Utrecht to study mathematics and physics in 1868. In 1875, after having finished his thesis, he worked for three years at the Leiden Observatory, before becoming the first Professor of Astronomy and Theoretical Mechanics at the University of Groningen, where he remained until his retirement in 1921. Between 1896 and 1900, lacking an observatory, he volunteered to measure photographic plates taken by David Gill, who was conducting a photographic survey of southern hemisphere stars at the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. The results of this collaboration was the publication of Cape Photographic Durchmusterung, a catalog listing positions and magnitudes for 454,875 stars in the Southern Hemisphere. In 1897, as part of the above work, he discovered Kapteyn's Star. It had the highest proper motion of any star known until the discovery of Barnard's Star in 1916.
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Seth Shostak is an American astronomer. He grew up in Arlington, VA and earned his physics degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in astronomy... from the California Institute of Technology. He is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and the 2004 winner of the Klumpke-Roberts Award awarded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy. Before his involvement with SETI research, he used radio telescopes in the USA and the Netherlands, searching for clues to the ultimate fate of the universe by analyzing galaxy motion. In addition to his experience as an active participant in SETI research, Shostak is also involved as a science educator. He presented twelve 30-minute lectures on audio-tape and video titled "The Search for Intelligent Life in Space" for the Teaching Company in 1999. Since February 2002 Shostak has hosted the SETI Institute's radio program Are We Alone? which was renamed "Big Picture Science" in July 2011.
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