Extragalactic research in Europe and the United States in the early 20th century

✍ Scribed by H.W. Duerbeck

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 137 KB
• Volume: 323
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-6337
• DOI: 10.1002/1521-3994(200212)323:6<534::aid-asna534>3.0.co;2-v

✦ Synopsis

While the theoretical foundations of modern relativistic cosmology were laid, to a large extent, by European researchers like Einstein, de Sitter, Friedmann, Lemaître, and others, observational cosmology was (and to a large extent, still is) dominated by US astronomers, working at Lick and Mt. Wilson observatories. From today's viewpoint, Hubble appears to dwarf all his -national and international -peers. However, Keeler and Curtis, Fath and Slipher carried put pioneering work in the US, as did Wolf, Wirtz, Lundmark, de Sitter in Europe, both by observation and by statistical analysis of data. European extragalactic research during the early 20th century is outlined and compared with studies in the United States. Reasons for the small impact of European research are a mixture of deliberate and accidental neglect and suppression, as well as the lack of technical and organizational infrastructure, which was especially noticeable after World War I.