How to Pronounce Adriaan van Maanen
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Mar 31, 1884 Sneek, Friesland, Netherlands Died on 26 Jan 1946 (aged 61)
Dutch astronomer
AriesAdriaan Van Maanen - Place of Birth, Date of Birth, Age, Wiki, Facts, Net Worth, Birthday, Biography and Family
Adriaan Van Maanen, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Family, Facts, Age, Net Worth, Biography and More in FamedBorn.com
About Adriaan Van Maanen
- Adriaan van Maanen (March 31, 1884 – January 26, 1946) was a Dutch–American astronomer. Van Maanen, born into a well-to-do family in Friesland, studied astronomy at the University of Utrecht (earning his Ph.D.
- in 1911) and worked briefly at the University of Groningen.
- In 1911, he came to the United States to work as a volunteer in an unpaid capacity at Yerkes Observatory.
- Within a year he got a position at the Mount Wilson Observatory, where he remained active until his death in 1946. He discovered Van Maanen's star. He is well known for his astrometric measurements of internal motions in spiral nebulae.
- Believing that nebulae were local, stellar and gaseous systems that existed in our galaxy, his measurements came to be at odds with Edwin Hubble's discovery that the Andromeda Nebula and other spiral nebulae were extragalactic objects.
- The speed at which he calculated the nebulae to rotate would, if Hubble were correct as to their extragalactic nature, have had their Cepheid stars moving at speeds faster than that of light.
- In 1935, it was decided that since Hubble's calculations of extragalactic Cepheid distances were correct, ergo van Maanen's astrometric measurements had to be incorrect. In 1924 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
