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Blaauw, Adriaan. Oral history interview with Adriaan Blaauw, 1979 August 19.

Title: Oral history interview with Adriaan Blaauw, 1979 August 19.

Early life and family in Amsterdam; childhood interest in astronomy and telescope-building; undergraduate at Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden (W. deSitter, J. Woltjer), works at Leiden Observatory; growing interest in galactic research (Ejnar Hertzsprung, Jan Oort); contact with others at Leiden (Paul Ehrenfest, Hendrik Kramers). Assistantship at Rijksuniversiteit te Gröningen, 1938; cooperative stellar catalog with Harvard University and Universität Hamburg. Life during the German Occupation, conditions in Leiden and Holland; the Resistance Movement; returns to Leiden, 1945. Begins work on thesis at end of war, continues Jacobus C. Kapteyn's interest in proper motion of helium star (Scorpio-Centaur association); compares Boss Catalog and FK Catalog for systematic errors (Oort). Discussion of postwar developments in time scale problem (Albrecht Unsöld, Victor Ambartsumian). To Yerkes Observatory, 1947; impressions of Yerkes and other American observatories: RR Lyrae variables (Otto Struve), 1947-1948; work on extension of cluster expansion (W. W. Morgan), 1952; work in Kenya on stellar positions (Maarten Schmidt), 1949-1950. Back to Yerkes, 1953-1957 (Bengt Strömgren, Gerard Kuiper, S. Chandrasekhar, A. Hiltner). Directorship of Kapteyn Laboratory, Groningen; organization of the Radio Foundation. Origins and development of European Southern Observatory; five-year term as Director. Views on development of astronomy in Holland (Antoine Pannekoek, Marcel Minnaert, Pieter van Rhijn); radio astronomy.

ArchivalResource: Sound recordings: 6 sound cassettes (ca. 6.0 hrs.), 1 session.Final transcript: 89 pp.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/83030692 View

Biermann, Ludwig, 1907-1986. Oral history interview with Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann, 1978 June 23 and July 6.

Title: Oral history interview with Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann, 1978 June 23 and July 6.

Overview of work in stellar interiors and plasma physics. Early interest in science; family background. Universität Göttingen (Hans Kienle, Max Born, Richard Courant, James Franck), beginning in 1929; astrophysics as applied science; stellar models (Arthur S. Eddington); Bengt Strömgren; Ludwig Prandtl; Mixing Length Theory; Ph.D. thesis on convection in stellar core; Karl Schwarzschild, Albrecht Unsöld, J. Robert Emden; Biermann updates Unsöld's solar model; work on the theory of sunspots after 1937; similarity of Schwarzschild's work; travels to Edinburgh and Cambridge (R. A. Sampson, George C. McVittie), 1933-1934; mixing wave length theory (Erika Böhm Vitense); interest in solar corona; contact with Otto Struve, Walter Grotrian, Walter Baade, Hannes Alfvén, Bengt Edlén, Max Planck, Max von Laue, Peter Debye; the Berlin-Dahlem colloquia; von Laue stimulates Biermann's interest in cometary physics. Work in quantum mechanics, 1940-1950; contact with Niels Bohr, 1941; Biermann's first influences in plasma physics (Thomas G. Cowling); creation of magnetic fields in stars and stellar model with non-uniform rotation; World War II interrupts publication of research; influence of Karl Wurm; rocket flights to examine solar ultraviolet light (Julius Bartels), 1947. Work on comets, late 1940s; asked by Werner Heisenberg to set up astrophysics group in Göttingen, 1947; work on gas tails of comets; study of solar corona (Eugene Parker); Fred Whipple's contributions to comet theory; Eleanore Trefftz. Work on controlled fusion, beginning 1957; duplication of classified research in U.S. Visiting professorship University of California, Berkeley, 1959-1960, contact with Georg von Hevesy. Later work on the origin of comets.

ArchivalResource: Sound recordings: 2 sound cassettes (ca. 2.0 hrs.), 2 sessions.Transcript: 44 p.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/78025043 View