Allan Sandage

Allan Sandage

Infobox Scientist
name = Allan Sandage
box_width =


image_width =150px
caption = Allan Sandage
birth_date = June 18 1926
birth_place = Iowa City, Iowa
death_date =
death_place =
residence =
citizenship =
nationality = American
ethnicity =
field = astronomy
work_institutions =
alma_mater = California Institute of Technology
doctoral_advisor = Edwin Hubble
doctoral_students =
known_for =
author_abbrev_bot =
author_abbrev_zoo =
influences =
influenced =
prizes =
religion =
footnotes =

Allan Rex Sandage (born June 18 1926 in Iowa City, Iowa) is an American astronomer.

Career

Allan R. Sandage is a famous scientist, most notably during the 1960s. Sandage graduated from the University of Illinois in 1948. By 1953 he earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. Sandage was a student of the famed cosmologist Edwin Hubble, and effectively continued Hubble's research program from the first part of the 20th century into the second half. Throughout the 1950s and well into the 1970s Sandage was regarded as the pre-eminent observational cosmologist. Sandage has made seminal contributions to all aspects of the cosmological distance scale from local calibrators within the galaxy to cosmologically distant galaxies.

Sandage began working at the Mount Palomar observatory. In 1958 he published the first good estimate for the Hubble parameter, namely 75 km/s/Mpc, which is quite close to today's accepted value. Later he became the chief advocate of an even lower value, around 50, corresponding to a Hubble age of around 20 billion years.

He performed spectral studies of globular clusters, and deduced that they had an age of at least 25 billion years. This led him to speculate that the universe did not merely expand, but actually expanded and contracted with a period of 80 billion years. The current cosmological estimates of the age of the universe, in contrast, are typically of the order of 14 billion years.

He is noted for the discovery in the M-82 galaxy of jets erupting from the core. These must have been caused by massive explosions in the core, and the evidence indicated the eruptions had been occurring for at least 1.5 million years.

Honors

Awards
*Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (1957)
*Eddington Medal (1963)
*Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1967)
*National Medal of Science (1970)
*Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1972)
*Bruce Medal (1975)
*Crafoord Prize (1991)Named after him
*Asteroid 9963 Sandage

Personal life

At age 50 he became a Christian. He responded to the question, "Can a person be a scientist and a Christian?", with "Yes. As I said before, the world is too complicated in all its parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone." [http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth15.html]

In Lee Strobel's book "The Case For Faith", Sandage is also quoted as saying, "The most amazing thing to me is existence itself. How is it that inanimate matter can organize itself to contemplate itself?" (p92)

Further reading

*Alan P. Lightman and Roberta Brawer, "Origins: the lives and worlds of modern cosmologists", Harvard University Press, 1990. Interviews with modern cosmologists, including Sandage.

*Timothy Ferris, "The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe," Harper Perennial, 2002. Non-technical description of research, primarily up to about 1980, on cosmology; Sandage was a key figure, and features accordingly.

*Dennis Overbye, "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos: the story of the scientific quest for the secret of the Universe", HarperCollins 1991, Back Bay (with new afterword), 1999. Very well-written historical account of modern cosmology told through the careers of the scientists involved, in which Sandage is the central character. Complementary to "Origins".

External links

*Bruce Medalist page on [http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Sandage/ Sandage]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Allan Sandage — Allan Rex Sandage (* 18. Juni 1926 in Iowa City, Iowa) ist ein US amerikanischer Astronom. Sandage studierte an der University of Illinois und am California Institute of Technology wo er sich ab 1949 als Student von Walter Baade mit… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Allan Sandage — (n. 1926) es un astrónomo y cosmólogo estadounidense que llevó a cabo su labor desde los Observatorios Carnegie en Pasadena, California, y descubrió las primeras estrellas errantes azules en el cúmulo globular M3 en 1952. Desde entonces, se pensó …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Allan Sandage — Allan Rex Sandage, né le 18 juin 1926 à Iowa City, Iowa (États Unis), et mort à San Gabriel (Californie) le 13 novembre 2010 d un cancer du pancréas[1], est un astronome américain. Sommaire 1 Biographie …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Allan Rex Sandage — Allan Sandage Astéroïde découvert : 1 (96155) 1973 HA 27 avril 1973 Allan Rex Sandage (né le 18 juin 1926 à Iowa City dans l Iowa) est un astronome américain. Il fut diplômé de l université de l Illinois en 1948. En 1953, il obtint son Ph.D …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Allan Rex Sandage — Nombre Allan Rex Sandage Nacimiento 18 …   Wikipedia Español

  • Sandage — Allan Rex Sandage (* 18. Juni 1926 in Iowa City, Iowa) ist ein US amerikanischer Astronom. Sandage studierte an der University of Illinois und am California Institute of Technology wo er sich ab 1949 als Student von Walter Baade mit… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Allan Rex Sandage — (* 18. Juni 1926 in Iowa City, Iowa; † 13. November 2010 in San Gabriel, Kalifornien[1]) war ein US amerikanischer Astronom. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Leben und Karriere 2 Ehrungen …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Sandage, Allan Rex — ▪ American astronomer born June 18, 1926, Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.       U.S. astronomer who discovered the first quasi stellar radio source (quasar), a starlike object that is a strong emitter of radio waves. He made the discovery in collaboration… …   Universalium

  • Sandage , Allan Rex — (1926–) American astronomer Born in Iowa City, Sandage graduated from the University of Illinois in 1948 and obtained his PhD in 1953 from the California Institute of Technology. He was on the staff of the Hale Observatories at Mount Wilson and… …   Scientists

  • Sandage — /san dij/, n. Allan R(ex), born 1926, U.S. astronomer: codiscoverer of the first quasar 1961. * * * …   Universalium

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”