Gerard Kuiper

Biography of Gerard Kuiper

On December 7, 1905 a small boy by the name of Gerrit Peter Kuiper was born in a small town in the Netherlands called Tuitjenhorn. His father was a tailor, and he himself was gifted with extraordinary eyesight that undoubtedly lead to his early proficiencies in the field of astronomy. Kuiper’s interest in astronomy would eventually lead him to make many discoveries including natural satellites, atmospheres, and binary stars, and produce a theory later to be proved true of a belt of comet-like debris existing in a ring just outside the solar system. All together this information caused Kuiper to become an astronomer with influence not limited to just his lifetime.

At first little Gerrit, who later was called Gerard, focused on his basic interest in the stars. This is not entirely surprising as he had eyesight that allowed him to see stars with a magnitude of 7.5, essentially four times dimmer than the average eye can see. By the time he reached the age of nineteen in 1924 Gerard began his studies with a number of other astronomers at Leiden University. He graduated in 1927 and completed his doctorate work- fittingly on binary stars- in 1933. At this time Kuiper moved to the United States and began work as a fellow in California under Robert Grant Aiken at the Lick Observatory. A few years later he left to work at the Harvard College Observatory.

            In 1935 while at this observatory, Kuiper met a young woman by the name of Sarah
Parker Fuller. The next year, they were married. The real successes for Kuiper, regarding the field of astronomy, comes in the years to follow as he joins the Yerkes Observatory in 1937 at the University of Chicago. This same year Gerard Kuiper became a naturalized citizen. As an official Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, now thirty two, began the bulk of his studies of the skies. In the time between his observing Kuiper found time to be a director of the observatory twice: once in 1947 and once in 1957. In 1944 he was focused more on planetary research and was able to confirm the presence of methane in the atmosphere of Titan, a moon of Saturn. By 1947 the interest in planets continued and Kuiper correctly predicted carbon dioxide as the main ingredient in the atmosphere of Mars, as well as the rings of Saturn being composed of ice particles. His research extended as far as Uranus, of which he discovered the fifth moon, Miranda. Over the next seven years Kuiper discovered Nereid orbiting Neptune, proved the polar ice caps on Mars are made of frozen water and not carbon dioxide, and proposed three major theories/predictions. The first of these was an influential new theory on the origins of the solar system. Kuiper proposed that the planets had formed from the condensation of a large cloud of gas surrounding the sun. In addition to this he predicted that the surface of the moon would be like ‘crunchy snow’ to walk on- verified later by Armstrong and his description of the moon’s surface. Two years after his solar system origin theory he suggested the presence of a disk-shaped region of minor planets outside the orbit of Neptune. While he was not able to confirm this during his life, it was in fact proven to be true twenty years after his death with the presence of what is today called the Kuiper Belt.

            In 1960 Kuiper founded the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona and was the director for the next thirteen years, until his death in 1973. Kuiper died while on vacation with his wife, Sarah, in Mexico. In his honor were named: The Kuiper Airborne Observatory, craters on the moon, Mercury, and Mars, and the Kuiper belt itself- the most recognized of his influences.