Rudolph Minkowski: Observational Astrophysicist

APR 01, 1985

His career spanned the era in which optical astronomy achieved vast improvements in sensitivity and radioastronomy emerged as a new science; his work contributed greatly to the successful cooperation between those two fields.

DOI: 10.1063/1.880969

Donald E. Osterbrock

Rudolph Minkowski was born in Germany near the end of the last century and died in California during the final quarter of this century. He was trained as a laboratory physicist, but worked most of his life as an observational astronomer. Using the largest optical telescopes in the world, he made important contributions to nearly every branch of nebular and extragalactic astronomy, but his most important contribution was to the identification and interpretation of cosmic radio sources. His monument is the National Geographic Society‐Palomar Observatory Sky Survey. He guided, encouraged and counseled a generation of radio and optical astronomers.

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Donald E. Osterbrock, Lick Observatory University of California, Santa Cruz.