Jean Jacques Raimond Jr. (13 April 1903, in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

– 3 December 1961) was a Dutch

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, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

Raimond was the son of Jean Jacques Raimond Sr., furniture maker in The Hague, and Tetje van der Werf. He studied astronomy at the universities of

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

and

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

. He obtained his PhD at the latter as a student of

Jacobus Kapteyn Prof Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn FRS FRSE LLD (19 January 1851 – 18 June 1922) was a Dutch astronomer. He carried out extensive studies of the Milky Way and was the discoverer of evidence for galactic rotation. Kapteyn was also among the fi ...

, defending the dissertation ''The Coefficient of Differential Galactic Absorption''. He became the director of the Zeiss Planetarium in The Hague at its opening in 1934. This was the first planetarium installed outside Germany. Here he had a strong influence on the popularization of astronomy. In 1944 he became the president of the 'Nederlandse Vereniging voor Weer- en Sterrenkunde' (NVWS, Netherlands Association for Meteorology and Astronomy) after serving as a board member. From 1938 until his death in 1961, he published annual issues of the popular series 'Sterrengids', an astronomical almanac. The asteroid

1450 Raimonda 1450 Raimonda, provisional designation , is a background asteroid from the central regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 15 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 20 February 1938, by astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at the Iso-Heikkilä ...

is named after him, as is the crater '' Raimond'' on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

. His son Ernst became a radio astronomer. In 1955 a local Dutch astronomy society was named after him. This society still exists albeit under a different name: ''Triangulum''. Recently it celebrated its 50th year of existence.

References

External links

* Triangulum 1903 births 1961 deaths 20th-century Dutch astronomers Leiden University alumni University of Groningen alumni Scientists from The Hague {{Europe-astronomer-stub