Pioneer of Galactic Astronomy: A Biography of Jacobus C. Kapteyn

Pieter C. van der Kruit is emeritus Jacobus C. Kapteyn Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD in astronomy from Leiden University in 1971 under Jan Hendrik Oort. He held a prestigious Carnegie postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories in Pasadena, California, before moving to the University of Groningen in 1975. He has held visiting positions at various institutions, including the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra, Australia; the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA; the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, and the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. His research concerns structure and dynamics of disks in galaxies. He has published over 160 papers, more than half as lead or sole author, contributed substantially to over 20 more, and authored or edited eight books.
In Groningen he taught introductory astronomy and advanced level courses on structure and dynamics of galaxies for many years, the latter also at a Saas-Fee winter school in Switzerland and in university curricula in Porto, Portugal, in Santiago, Chile and in Beijing, China. He is a former director of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute and has been a member and often chairman of numerous national and international boards and committees, notably President of Council of the European Southern Observatory and chairman of the Board for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array ALMA. In 2006 he received a Royal Decoration as Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion.