BornÄlvsby, Sweden, 14 July 1889
DiedLund, Sweden, 23 April 1958
Swedish astronomer Knut Lundmark is best remembered for having been the first to propose Crab Nebula as the remnant of the 1,054 guest star (supernova) on the basis of its location, quite close to that given in translated Chinese records. He was one of the pioneers in extragalactic astronomy and also almost discovered what is now called Hubble’s law. Lundmark was the son of Johann August Lundmark (1848–1896) and Lovisa Eriksdotter (1852–1939) and married Birgit Lundmark (1886–1974) with whom he is buried in the churchyard in Älvsby.
Lundmark began studies at the University of Uppsala in 1908, receiving a first degree in 1912 and a doctorate in 1920 for a thesis, carried out under Östen Bergstrand , on methods of distance measurement in astronomy, including the apparent diameters and apparent brightnesses of nebulae, individual very bright stars, and nova explosions and calibrating these on known events in the Milky Way....
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Teerikorpi, P. (2014). Lundmark, Knut Emil. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_875
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