Sitter

Willem de Sitter

Born: 6 May 1872 in Sneek, Netherlands
Died: 20 Nov 1934 in Leiden, Netherlands

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De Sitter studied mathematics at Groningen and then joined the Groningen astronomical laboratory. He worked at the Cape Observatory in South Africa (1897-99) then, in 1908, de Sitter was appointed to the chair of astronomy at Leiden. From 1919 he was director of the Leiden Observatory.

He published a series of papers (1916-17) on the astronomical consequences of Einstein's general theory of relativity. This work led directly to Eddington's 1919 expedition to measure the gravitational deflection of light rays passing near the Sun, results which, at that time, could only be obtained during an eclipse.

De Sitter, unlike Einstein, maintained that relativity actually implied that the universe was expanding, theoretical results which were later verified observationally and accepted by Einstein.

References:

  1. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. P Kerszberg, The invented universe : the Einstein-De Sitter controversy (1916-17) and the rise of relativistic cosmology (Oxford, 1989).
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