Anton Pannekoek

Antonie Pannekoek (1873 - 1960) was an astronomer, astrophysicist and council communist.

Life

Early Life and Scientific Career

Anton was born in Vaassen, Netherlands in 1873, he had an interest in astronomy (the study of objects in space such as comets, planets, stars and galaxies) from an early age, making observations of the star Polaris from a young age. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Leiden in 1891 and published his first article "On the Necessity of Further Researches on the Milky Way". After graduating, he was appointed as an observer at the Leiden Observatory, he gained a PhD in 1902, a dissertation titled: "Studies on the light change Algols". He had a child in 1905 (who became a world-renowned geologist) with his wife Aaltje Noordewier-Reddingius.

Political Shift

Anton had been a liberal for most of his life, but became a socialist after reading books by Edward Bellamy and began to study Karl Marx. He left the observatory in Leiden after becoming dissatisfied with his work and moved to Berlin. He became a teacher at a school owned by the Social Democrats and published political articles for magazines.

Return to the Netherlands

At the start of World War I, he was on holiday in the Netherlands and did not want to return to Germany, instead becoming a teacher in physics, chemistry and maths. After the war, he became fiercly criticial of Lenin's actions in the October Revolution and authoritarian socialism in general. In 1925, he became a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam and was elected to the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (actions that angered the government, as he was a libertarian communist).

He traveled extensively through Indonesia to observe solar eclipses and mapped the sky in the southern hemisphere. His application of quantum mechanics and physics to astronomy lead him to being the founder of astrophysics in the Netherlands. He recieved an honory doctorate from Harvard University in 1936 and in 1951 the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society. The astronomical institute of the University of Amsterdam, the Anton Pannekoek Institute, which he founded was named after him.