Adriaan Blaauw

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Adriaan Blaauw (born April 12, 1914, Amsterdam) is a Dutch astronomer.

Blaauw studied in Leiden and Groningen. In the 1950s he worked a few years at the Yerkes Observatory. In 1957 he became director of the "Kapteyn Astronomical Institute" in Groningen. Blaauw was closely involved in the founding of the European Southern Observatory, and was its general director from 1970 to 1975. He stayed at Leiden until his retirement in 1981, during which he was president of the International Astronomical Union and led the scientific programme of the astronometric satellite Hipparcos. His research has involved star formation, the motions of star clusters and stellar associations, and distance scale. His main contributions are the explanation of the origin of stars that move with high velocity in our galaxy and the description of star formation in associations.

Among a great number of distinctions he won the Bruce Medal in 1989. The University of Groningen instituted a Blaauw chair and Blaauw lecture in 1997. The asteroid 2145 Blaauw is named after him.