Sidney van den Bergh

For as long as people have looked up into the night sky, they've asked the question, "How big is the universe?" As a high school student in Wassenaar, Holland, I was no different. I wanted to answer the questions: what is the size of our universe, and how old might it be?

In 1956, while working on my PhD in Göttingen, Germany, I viewed the first prints of the Palomar Sky Survey. I almost felt as if individual galaxies and star clusters were talking to me. Soon I realized that most galaxies with low surface brightness were dwarf galaxies.

Two years later, I came to Canada to work as a professor at the University of Toronto where I developed the DDO (David Dunlap Observatory) Catalogue of Dwarf Galaxies. Inspecting the Palomar prints also made it possible for me to catalogue supernova remnants and tell the difference between young and old galactic star clusters. This galaxy classification system and measurement of cosmic distances allowed me to refine estimates of the size and age of the universe.

After twenty years in Toronto, I started the second half of my career as director of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria, B.C. I studied star clusters and supernovae, and pursued my childhood questions about the nature of our universe. My research has contributed to the way we now think about the size and age of the universe.

http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/english/about/hallfame/u_i49_e.cfm

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