Background
Dirk Brouwer was born on September 1, 1902, in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the fourth of six children born to Martinus Brouwer, a government employee, and his wife Louisa van Wamelen.
1955
Brouwer was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
1966
Brouwer was awarded the prestigious Bruce Medal posthumously.
Leiden University, Leiden and The Hague, South Holland, Netherlands
Brouwer studied under Willem de Sitter at Leiden University, where he received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1927.
University of La Plata, La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
Brouwer received the Doctor of Science (honorary) degree from the University of La Plata in 1959.
Astronomer educator scientist author
Dirk Brouwer was born on September 1, 1902, in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He was the fourth of six children born to Martinus Brouwer, a government employee, and his wife Louisa van Wamelen.
Brouwer studied under Willem de Sitter at Leiden University, where he received the Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1927. He also received the Doctor of Science (honorary) degree from the University of La Plata in 1959.
After studying at the University of Leiden, Brouwer then came to the United States on a year’s fellowship and joined the faculty of Yale University in 1928 as an instructor. In 1941 he became both a professor of astronomy and successor to Frank Schlesinger as director of the Yale Observatory, posts he held, together with the editorship of the Astronomical Journal, for the rest of his life.
At Yale, Brouwer first assisted Ernest William Brown in his search for differences between predicted and observed positions of the moon that would reveal changes in the earth’s rotation. In 1930 he found that some of the differences were due to incorrectly located reference stars. To get better positions for these stars, Brouwer turned to asteroids ( 1935), later investigating the origins of these small bodies in a paper extending the membership in Hirayama’s families (1951) and one on Kirkwood’s gaps (1963).
After Brown’s death in 1938, Brouwer took up more general orbital problems. Papers he published in 1938 and 1946 formed the basis for a direct determination of planetary positions by stepwise numerical integration, which was realized in Coordinates of the Five Outer Planets, 1653-2060 (1951), written jointly with Wallace John Eckert and Gerald Maurice Clemence. This was the first astronomical problem to be solved through the use of a high-speed computer. In an address delivered in 1955, when he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his outstanding contributions to celestial mechanics, Brouwer outlined the way in which computer techniques were changing his field.
The advent of artificial earth satellites in 1957 provided an application for two theoretical papers Brouwer had written in 1946 and 1947, and led to two more (1959, 1961) of significant merit.
Brouwer was an active member of the International Astronomical Union and influential in its adoption of a new set of fundamental astronomical constants in 1964. He was also a member American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Astronomical Society, American Association Variable Star Observers (president 1941-1943), Astronomical Society of Pacific, International Astronomical Union, National Academy Sciences, American Academy Arts and Sciences, Royal Astronomical Society (foreign associate), Royal Netherlands Academy Sciences (correspondent), American Geophysical Union, Buenos Aires Academy Sciences (correspondent 1961), Sigma Xi.
Dirk Brouwer was married on November 1, 1928 to Johanna de Graaf and became an American citizen in 1937.