Astronomy: Gerard Kuiper

Gerrit Pieter Kuiper was born on 7 December 1905 in Harenkarspel in the Netherlands. After his eduction this Dutch astronomer moved to the United States in 1933. He discovered Saturn's moon Miranda and Neptune's Nereid. And he discovered the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. His greatest achievement was the prediction of thousands of planetesimals in the region past Neptune: the Trans-Neptune Objects. The existence of this region was later confirmed and named after Gerard Kuiper into the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt. Kuiper won the Henry Norris Russel Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society in 1959, helped spot landing sites for the Apollo missions in the 1960s. Craters on the Moon, Mars and Mercury are named after Kuiper and Asteroid 1776 Kuiper. This great contributor to astrophysics died in Mexico City in 1973. Related subject >> the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt