Waltraut Seitter (13 January 1930 – 15 November 2007) was a German

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 ...

and became the first woman in Germany to hold an astronomy chair.

Life and work

Waltraut Carola Seitter was born in

Zwickau Zwickau (; is, with around 87,500 inhabitants (2020), the fourth-largest city of Saxony after Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz and it is the seat of the Zwickau District. The West Saxon city is situated in the valley of the Zwickau Mulde (German: ...

in 1930, where her father worked as an engineer with the

Horch Horch () was a car brand manufacturer, founded in Germany by August Horch & Cie at the beginning of the 20th century. It is one of the predecessors of the present day Audi company, which itself resulted from the merger of Auto Union Aktienge ...

automobile company. She went to school in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, where she finished high school in 1949 (after jobs as tramway ticket collector, refugee aide and draftswoman), and entered the university to study physics, mathematics, chemistry and astronomy. She continued her studies at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts with a grant from the

Fulbright Program The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

, obtained her Master of Arts in physics in 1955, and became an astronomy instructor. From 1958 to 1962 she worked at Hoher List Observatory of Bonn University, obtained her Ph.D., and held the positions of assistant, observer and adjunct professor at Bonn University. In 1967, she was a guest professor of the American Astronomical Society at

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

, afterward professor at Smith College (since 1973, Eliza Appleton Haven Professor for Astronomy). In 1975, she was called to the chair of astronomy at Muenster University in Germany (the first woman in Germany to hold an astronomy chair), and became director of the astronomical institute up to her retirement in 1995. When in Bonn, she worked on problems of stellar statistics and on spectral classification of stars, publishing the Bonn Spectral Atlas (in two volumes). In Muenster, with a dedicated team of young researchers, she organized the Muenster Redshift Project (MRSP), a method to derive redshifts from UK Schmidt telescope objective prism plates, and the Muenster Red Sky Survey, a galaxy catalog of the southern hemisphere, based on ESO Schmidt direct red plates. With the MRSP data, the first indications of the action of the

cosmological constant In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is the constant coefficient of a term that Albert Einstein temporarily added to his field eq ...

were found, shortly before major supernova searches established its existence with certainty. During most of her career, she also did research on novae and related eruptive stars. Exhibits arranged by her include Women in Astronomy, and Science in Exile (Smith College), as well as Kepler and his times (Muenster 1980). She also organized several international astronomical meetings. Since 1975, Waltraut Seitter was married to Hilmar Duerbeck, a fellow astronomer. The asteroid (4893) Seitter, discovered in 1986, is named after her.

Selected publications

* ''Two-color diagrams and questions of stellar statistics'', 1962 * ''The spectrum of the Nova Herculis in 1963: After objective prism recordings at the Observatory Hoher List'', 1963 * ''Bonner Spectral-Atlas I, II'', 1970, 1975 * ''Large-scale structures in the universe: observational and analytical methods'', 1988 * ''Cosmological aspects of X-ray clusters of galaxies'', 1994

References

External links

* JPL Small-Body Database Browse

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seitter, Waltraut Carola 1930 births 2007 deaths 20th-century German astronomers Academic staff of the University of Münster People from Zwickau Smith College alumni Smith College faculty Scientists from Saxony