Gerard Peter Kuiper was a Dutch astronomer, planetary scientist, selenographer, author and professor.
12 Facts About Gerard Kuiper
2.
Gerard Kuiper is the eponymous namesake of the Kuiper belt.
3.
Gerard Kuiper studied at Leiden University in 1924, where at the time a very large number of astronomers had congregated.
4.
Gerard Kuiper received his candidate degree in Astronomy in 1927 and continued straight on with his graduate studies.
5.
Gerard Kuiper finished his doctoral thesis on binary stars with Hertzsprung in 1933, after which he traveled to California to become a fellow under Robert Grant Aitken at the Lick Observatory.
6.
From 1947 to 1949, Gerard Kuiper served as the director of the McDonald Observatory in west Texas.
7.
Gerard Kuiper discovered two natural satellites of planets in the Solar System, namely Uranus's satellite Miranda and Neptune's satellite Nereid.
8.
Gerard Kuiper pioneered airborne infrared observing using a Convair 990 aircraft in the 1960s.
9.
Gerard Kuiper spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, but moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1960 to found the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.
10.
Gerard Kuiper served as the laboratory's director for the rest of his life.
11.
However Gerard Kuiper himself believed that such objects would have been swept clear by planetary gravitational perturbations, so that none or few would exist there today.
12.
The Gerard Kuiper Prize, named in his honor, is the most distinguished award given by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, an international society of professional planetary scientists.