Pieter Hendrik van Cittert (30 May 1889, Gouda – 8 October 1959,

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

) was a Dutch physicist and science historian. He was born in Gouda, Netherlands, to Benjamin Pieter van Cittert and Petronella Antonia Huber, and died on October 8, 1959, in

. His achievements include proving the

van Cittert–Zernike theorem The van Cittert–Zernike theorem, named after physicists Pieter Hendrik van Cittert and Frits Zernike, is a formula in coherence theory that states that under certain conditions the Fourier transform of the intensity distribution function of a ...

about the coherence of radiation and founding the University Museum in Utrecht.

Career

In 1912, Hendrik van Cittert joined the Physics Laboratory at the University of Utrecht. In 1918, he discovered thousands of historical scientific instruments from the eighteenth-century Physics Society in

. This collection was the starting point for the University Museum, which Hendrik van Cittert founded in 1928. He was promoted in 1919. In 1921, Hendrik van Cittert and

Leonard Ornstein Leonard Salomon Ornstein (November 12, 1880 in Nijmegen, the Netherlands – May 20, 1941 in Utrecht, the Netherlands) was a Dutch physicist. Biography Ornstein studied theoretical physics with Hendrik Antoon Lorentz at University of Lei ...

were among the founders of the Dutch Physical Society (NNV). Hendrik van Cittert was a part-time teacher of physics at HOBS in Utrecht (1916–1950). He founded the Physics Laboratory in Utrecht (1922–1950) and became the first directorCabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Jim Bennett & Sofia Talas. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2013. ISSN 1872-0684. of the University Museum of Utrecht (1951–1955).

Personal Life

Van Cittert married his colleague, the physicist Johanna Geertruida van Cittert-Eymers in 1938.

References

1889 births 1959 deaths 20th-century Dutch physicists Historians of science Utrecht University faculty People from Gouda, South Holland {{physicist-stub