Arnold Kohlschütter

Ernst Arnold Kohlschütter (July 6, 1883 – May 28, 1969) was a German astronomer and astrophysicist from Halle.

In 1908 he was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen.

In 1911 he began working at the Mount Wilson observatory, studying the spectra of the Sun and stars. In collaboration with Walter Sidney Adams, they discovered that the absolute luminosity of a star was proportional to the relative intensity of the lines in the spectrum. This allowed astronomers to determine the distance of stars, including main sequence and giants, using the spectroscope.

He became the director of the Bonn observatory in 1925. Therein he was dedicated to astrometric studies.

Kohlschütter crater on the Moon was named after him.

External links

* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1970AN....292..142S Arnold Kohlschütter 6. 7. 1883-28. 5. 1969] , "Astronomische Nachrichten", vol. 292, p.142.
* [http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~geffert/stwub/hist.html Geschichte der Sternwarte der Universität Bonn]