Person: Brück, Hermann
Hermann Brück was a German-born astronomer who spent the great portion of his career in various positions in Britain and Ireland.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Kisskalt held the a chair of Bacteriology and Public Health at the University of Kiel and, to see if Brück was good enough, he arranged for his colleague Otto Toeplitz to test his ability.
- Brück moved more than most, spending the summer semester of 1924 at Kiel, the winter semester of 1924 at Munich and the summer semester of 1925 at Bonn.
- Brück continued to study Sommerfeld's courses on quantum and wave mechanics but continued to take mathematics courses, particularly, in Brück's words, "the brilliant lectures of Carathéodory." He also took both a lecture course and a laboratory course by Wilhelm Wien on experimental physics.
- To study for a doctorate under Sommerfeld, Brück had to join Sommerfeld's seminar and to do this he had to prove he was good enough by presenting details of a recent paper.
- Brück graduated with his doctorate, magna cum laude, from the University of Munich on 24 July 1928.
- It was Sommerfeld who suggested the next step in Brück's career.
- Sommerfeld was fascinated by Arthur Eddington's book The Internal Constitution of Stars (1926) and, knowing that Brück loved astronomy, suggested that he should work on astrophysics.
- After two years on the Research Fellowship, Brück was offered a permanent post at the Observatory.
- Brück had been brought up a Lutheran but, under the influence of two Roman Catholics, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1935.
- In 1936 Brück abruptly left Germany with his girl friend Irma Waitzfelder (1905-1950) and he went to Italy to work as a research assistant at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.
- After a year in Italy, Brück travelled to England where he took up a post as Assistant Observer at the Solar Physics Observatory in Cambridge, working under Arthur Eddington.
- Peter Brück became a geologist at University College Dublin (1964-68), the Geographical Survey Ireland (1968-79) and Professor of Geology at University College, Cork since 1979.
- Eddington died in 1944, and in 1946 Brück became the Assistant Director of the Cambridge Observatory.
- The particular collaboration was between Armagh and Dunsink and the Boyden Observatory in South Africa, which was set up by Brück and handed over to the joint management of the Irish observatories.
- Brück served as Dean of the Faculty of Science of the University of Edinburgh in 1968-1970.
Born 15 August 1905, Berlin, Germany. Died 4 March 2000, Edinburgh, Scotland.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Astronomy, Origin Germany
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References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
