was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

academic, physicist, astronomer and president of Kyoto University.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Shinjō Shinzō''" in ; n.b., Louis-Frédéric is pseudonym of Louis-Frédéric Nussbaum, ''see'
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Authority File
.

Biography

Shinzō Shinjō was born on 26 August 1873 in

Aizuwakamatsu is a city in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 118,159 in 50,365 households, and a population density of 310 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Geography Aizuwakamatsu is located in the west ...

, Fukushima Prefecture. He graduated from Department of Physics at Imperial College of Science in 1895 and in 1897 started teaching at a military engineering school. In 1900 he assumed a position of associate professor at Kyoto University in the field of mechanics. Between 1905 and 1907 Shinjo studied astronomy at University of Goettingen in Germany with

Karl Schwarzschild Karl Schwarzschild (; 9 October 1873 – 11 May 1916) was a German physicist and astronomer. Schwarzschild provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for the limited case of a single spherical non-r ...

. He defended his PhD in 1909 and later began teaching at a newly established Department of Astronomy in Kyoto. Shinjo was president of Kyoto University from 1929 through 1933. He died of heatstroke in Nanjing in 1938.

Work

Research work of Shinjo was mostly concentrated in geodesy, astrophysics and ancient Chinese astronomical history. He spent much effort on accurate measurements of the Earth gravity and magnetic field, which were important in that time. His field measurements were mostly performed in Japan, Germany (

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream o ...

), China (Singapore),

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...

and Korea, and he also explored the gravity of the

Japan Trench The Japan Trench is an oceanic trench part of the Pacific Ring of Fire off northeast Japan. It extends from the Kuril Islands to the northern end of the Izu Islands, and is at its deepest. It links the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench to the north and ...

using a navy submarine in 1934. His astronomy achievements included establishment and development of the Space Physics Laboratory at Kyoto University in 1918, where he studied meteors,

variable Variable may refer to: * Variable (computer science), a symbolic name associated with a value and whose associated value may be changed * Variable (mathematics), a symbol that represents a quantity in a mathematical expression, as used in many ...

and binary stars.

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Shinzō Shinjō, OCLC/

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

encompasses roughly 40+ works in 50+ publications in 4 languages and 200+ library holdings. WorldCat Identities新城新藏 1873–1938
/ref>
''On the rotation of celestial bodies''
(1918), in English * ''Superstition'' (迷信) (1925) * 東洋天文學史研究 (1928) * 東洋天文學史研究 (1933) * 科學 (天文) (1935) * ''Ancient Chinese Astronomy'' (中國上古天文) (1936)

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shinjo, Shinzo 20th-century Japanese astronomers Japanese physicists Presidents of Kyoto University Kyoto University faculty 1873 births 1938 deaths