George Van Biesbroeck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George A. Van Biesbroeck (or Georges-Achille Van Biesbroeck) (January 21, 1880–February 23, 1974) was a Belgian-American astronomer.
He discovered the periodic comet 53P/Van Biesbroeck, as well as two non-periodic comets: C/1925 W1 (Van Biesbroeck 1) and C/1935 Q1 (Van Biesbroeck 2).
He also discovered a number of asteroids.
He was born in Ghent, Belgium and became a civil engineer. However, in 1904 he left this profession and joined the staff at the observatory at the Royal Observatory of Belgium at Uccle.
In 1915, as World War I was raging, he was invited to come to Yerkes Observatory and brought his family with him. He settled in the United States and worked on double stars, comets, asteroids, and variable stars. In 1945 he retired at the age of 65, but remained very active. In 1963 he came to the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson under Gerard Kuiper.
Van Biesbroeck won the James Craig Watson Medal in 1957.
The asteroid 1781 Van Biesbroeck is named after him, as are Van Biesbroeck crater on the Moon and the red dwarf Van Briesboeck's Star (Wolf 1055 AB). The George Van Biesbroeck Prize, awarded by the American Astronomical Society, is named in his honor as well.
