Jan Schilt (3 February 1894, Gouda – 9 January 1982, Englewood, New Jersey) was a Dutch-American

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...

, inventor of the Schilt

photometer A photometer is an instrument that measures the strength of electromagnetic radiation in the range from ultraviolet to infrared and including the visible spectrum. Most photometers convert light into an electric current using a photoresistor, ...

Biography

Schilt was born in 1894 in the Netherlands, and educated there under Jacobus Kapteyn. He emigrated to the United States in 1933 as the Chair of

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

's astronomy department, a position which he filled until his retirement in 1962, when he was granted the title of Rutherford Professor of Astronomy Emeritus. Schilt's astronomical work included the invention of the Schilt

, a device which measures the light output of stars, and, indirectly, their distances. He worked on the motions of star streams in the

Milky Way Galaxy The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. ...

, and was director of the Yale-Columbia Southern Station in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

and Canberra, as well as Director of the Rutherford Observatory at Columbia. Schilt was noted at Columbia for walking into his classes the first day after the launch of Sputnik 1 and commenting "Well, gentlemen, it is not every day we have something new in the sky to talk about", following which he devoted the entire class to proving that Sputnik had been deliberately launched into an

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as ...

designed to make it invisible from the United States for as long as possible (six weeks). 13,500 items of his papers are contained in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University.

Honor

Asteroid 2308 Schilt (1967 JM) was named in his honor.

Published works

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References

*New York Times obituary, January 11, 1982 *Columbia University Library Bulletin {{DEFAULTSORT:Schilt, Jan 1894 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American astronomers 20th-century Dutch astronomers Discoverers of asteroids People from Gouda, South Holland Utrecht University alumni University of Groningen alumni Dutch emigrants to the United States Columbia University faculty 20th-century American inventors

Biography

Honor

Published works

See also

References