Alternate Name
BornSneek, the Netherlands, 6 May 1872
DiedLeiden, The Netherlands, 20 November 1934
Dutch mathematical astronomer Willem de Sitter gave his name to one of the first solutions to Albert Einstein ’s equations of general relativity, which showed that a universe containing very little matter would, in some sense, expand, and so prepared the way for Edwin Hubble ’s discovery of that expansion (though a different solution in fact applies). De Sitter was the son of a judge, Lamoraal U. de Sitter and Catharine Th. W. Bertling. He received his early education at Arnhem, the Netherlands, where his father was President of the Court. De Sitter studied at the University of Groningen, primarily in mathematics, under Jacobus Kapteyn , with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship and scientific collaboration, receiving a Ph.D. in 1901 for work involving observations of the satellites of Jupiter, made in Cape Town, South Africa (1897–1899). In Cape Town, de Sitter...
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Selected References
Blaauw, A. (1975). “Sitter, Willem de.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. Vol. 12, p. 448–450. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
De Sitter, W. (1925). “New Mathematical Theory of Jupiter’s Satellites.” Annals Leiden Observatory12: 1–83.
De Sitter, W. (1931). “Jupiter’s Galilean Satellites.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society91: 706–738. (George Darwin Lecture, 8 May 1931.)
— (1932). Kosmos: A Course of Six Lectures on the Development of Our Insight into the Structure of the Universe. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. (A historical review of research on the structure of the Universe is in his monograph.)
— (1933). The Astronomical Aspect of the Theory of Relativity. Berkeley: university of California Press. (Published shortly before his death.)
Jones, H. Spencer (1935). “Willem de Sitter.” Monthly of the Notices Royal Astronomical Society95: 343–347.
Macpherson, H. (1933). Makers of Astronomy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Chap. 8.
Oort, J. H. (1935). “Obituary”. Observatory58: 22–27.
Van der Kruit, P. C. and K. van Berkel (2000). The Legacy of Kapteyn; Studies on Kapteyn and the Development of Modern Astronomy. Dordrecht: Kluwer: Academic Publishers. (His grandson W. R. de Sitter contributed “Kapteyn and de Sitter; a Rare and Special Teacher-Student and Coach-Player Relationship,” pp. 79–108.)
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Blaauw, A. (2014). de Sitter, Willem. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1284
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