Marcel Gilles Jozef Minnaert

Minnaert, Marcel Gilles Jozef

 

Born Feb. 12, 1893, in Bruges, Flanders; died Oct. 26, 1970, in Utrecht. Dutch astrophysicist; specialist in solar physics.

Minnaert studied at Ghent between 1910 and 1922 and at Leiden and Utrecht between 1919 and 1922; he received a doctorate in biology in 1914 and a doctorate in mathematics in 1925. In 1936 he was appointed a professor of astronomy and director of the Utrecht Observatory. Between 1942 and 1944 he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp.

Minnaert’s works dealt with problems in the precision photometry of the solar spectrum, the physics of the solar atmosphere, and methods for the quantitative spectral analysis of the sun and stars. In 1940, together with the Dutch astronomers G. Mulders and J. Houtgast, he compiled the extensive Photometric Atlas of the Solar Spectrum. Minnaert also wrote a number of popular works on astronomy.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
Svet i tsvet v prirode, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1969.
Prakticheskaia astronomiia. Moscow, 1971.