biography
| name: |
van de Hulst, Hendrik Christoffel
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| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1918– )
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| biography:
| Pioneer of radio astronomy, born in Utrecht, The Netherlands. While still a student (1944), he predicted theoretically that interstellar hydrogen would be detectable by radio techniques due to the occasional (once in 10 million years) re-alignment of magnetic fields within the hydrogen atom. Such emissions were first detected in 1951 by E M Purcell and H Ewen. The technique has since proved invaluable in detecting neutral hydrogen in both our own and other galaxies, as well as in interstellar space. In 1970 he became director of the Leyden Observatory. |
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