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J.C. KAPTEYN HIS LIFE and WORKS Henriette Hertzsprung–Kapteyn

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J.C. KAPTEYN HIS LIFE and WORKS Henriette Hertzsprung–Kapteyn J.C. KAPTEYN HIS LIFE AND WORKS Henriette Hertzsprung–Kapteyn Introduced and translated with some annotations by Pieter C. van der Kruit H. Hertzsprung–Kapteyn J.C. Kapteyn: His Life and Works Translated and annotated by Pieter C. van der Kruit Pieter C. van der Kruit Emeritus Jacobus C. Kapteyn professor of astronomy Kapteyn Astronomical Institute University of Groningen the Netherlands Cover picture: Cover picture: Henriette M.A.A. Hertzsprung–Kapteyn with her father Jacobus C. Kapteyn. Part of an illustration from this biography (see Figure 17). Fig. 1 The Kapteyns lived from 1910 to 1920 at the address Ossenmarkt 6, Groningen. During the 1999 Legacy Symposium (The Legacy of J.C. Kapteyn by myself and Klaas van Berkel [1]), three of Kapteyn’s great-great-grandchildren unveiled this plaque in the facade of that house. The year 1918 (taken from his daughter Henriette Hertzsprung–Kapteyn’s biography [2]) is incorrect and should read 1920. My English translation of the French text is: ‘If you don’t have what you love, then you must love what you have.’ This quote is attributed to the French writer of historical articles and memoirs Roger de Rabutin, Count of Bussy (1618–1693), also known as Roger Bussy-Rabutin. Contents Preface ................................................................. i 1 Parents ............................................................. 1 2 Brothers and sisters .................................................. 7 3 Childhood .......................................................... 9 4 University ........................................................... 15 5 The Kalshoven family ................................................ 19 6 Leiden .............................................................. 21 7 Groningen .......................................................... 27 8 The Cape Photographic Durchmusterung .............................. 33 9 Gill ................................................................. 41 10 The Laboratory ..................................................... 45 11 Newcomb ........................................................... 51 12 Two perfect gentlemen ............................................... 55 13 Vries ............................................................... 57 14 The professor ....................................................... 61 15 A versatile life ....................................................... 65 16 Star Streams and Selected Areas....................................... 73 17 At home ............................................................ 81 iii iv Contents 18 America ............................................................ 83 19 The World War ...................................................... 93 20 Leiden again ........................................................ 99 21 The last years in Groningen ...........................................103 A Literature ...........................................................111 References . 111 Index ..................................................................113 Preface In 1928 Henriette Hertzsprung–Kapteyn, daughter of Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn, wrote a biography of her father, entitled J.C. KAPTEYN: ZIJN LEVEN EN WERKEN, and pub- lished it with publisher P. Noordhoff in Groningen. The book is now part of the Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren (Digital Library of Dutch Literature), where a complete electronic version of the book is available [2]. This is the only existing biography of Jacobus Kapteyn. It is known that astronomer Willem de Sitter and historian Johan Huizinga had been planning to write a biography of Kapteyn. Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) was Kapteyn’s first PhD student (1901). He was appointed professor of astronomy in Leiden in 1908 and was director of Leiden Obser- vatory (Sterrewacht) between 1919 until his death. De Sitter has done fundamental work (starting with his thesis) on the large satellites of Jupiter, but is among a wider audience best known for his work on cosmology and promoter of Einstein’s theory of general rel- ativity. He and Einstein proposed in 1932 a model for an expanding cosmos based on de Sitter’s solution of Einstein’s field equation, which is now referred to as the Einstein- de Sitter universe. Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) was appointed professor of history in Groningen in 1905, but took up a similar chair in Leiden in 1915, which he held until his detention by the Nazi’s in 1942. He was the son of Dirk Huizinga, professor of phys- iology in Groningen and close friend of Kapteyn. In a note, dated August 24, 1925, in the astronomical periodical the Observatory, de Sitter described their intention to write a biography of Kapteyn and appealed to colleagues for any information or help [4]. They seemed to have moved most of Kapteyn’s archive of correspondence to Leiden in prepa- ration of this. However, in the end the biography was never written.1 It is likely that later de Sitter’s son Aernout was planning to write the biography and had been transporting Kapteyn’s correspondence – maybe together with other papers – in a big crate to Indone- sia, where he was appointed director of Lembang Observatory. This crate was possibly lost in the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940 [5]. Various obituaries and short biographical articles have been written about Kapteyn as an astronomer and scientist, most notably by A. Blaauw: Kapteijn, Jacobus Cornelius [6]2. In 1999 a ‘Legacy’ symposium has been devoted to Kapteyn with the title The Legacy of J.C. Kapteyn: Kapteyn and the development of modern astronomy. The proceedings [1] 1 In 2014 I published a comprehensive biography of Kapteyn, entitled Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn: Born investigator of the Heavens [3]. 2 I will come back to the spelling of the name ‘Kapteyn’ or ‘Kapteijn’ below. i ii Preface have been edited and published by Piet van der Kruit and Klaas van Berkel (editors) and be referred to as ‘the Legacy’. More recently a collection of ‘love letters’ that Kapteyn wrote to Elise Kalshoven at the time that she was still his fiancee´ and future wife, while Kapteyn already had moved to Groningen, has been published under the title Lieve Lize: De minnebrieven van de Groningse astronoom J.C. Kapteyn aan Elise Kalshoven, 1878- 1879 [7] by Klaas van Berkel and Annelies Noordhof-Hoorn, referred to below as ‘the Love Letters’. Henriette Mariette Augustine Albertine Kapteyn (Groningen: November 16, 1881 – Utrecht: October 15, 1956), known to intimates as ‘Hetty’, was the second child and second daughter of Jacobus Cornelius (Ko) Kapteyn (Barneveld: January 19, 1851 – Am- sterdam: June 18, 1922) and his wife Catharina Elisabeth (Elise) Kalshoven (Barneveld: June 9, 1855 – Amsterdam: March 2, 1945). They had married on July 17, 1879 at Utrecht after Kapteyn had taken up his professorship in astronomy and theoretical mechanics at the University of Groningen, to which he was appointed in 1878. Henriette had an older sister (Jacoba Cornelia, ‘Dody’, born in 1880), a younger brother (Gerrit Jacobus, ‘Rob’, born in 1883), while there had been a stillborn brother in 1895. In historical notes about Kapteyn, when this biography is mentioned, almost invariably the name of the author is written as Henrietta Hertzsprung–Kapteyn. The cover of the book only has her first initial ‘H’. On the other hand, there are on the WWW a few ge- nealogies of the Kapteyn and Kalshoven families, that all spell her name Henriette[8]. Fortunately, the City of Groningen provides electronic, public access to its archives, in- cluding the records of births for the period since 1811 (up to one hundred years prior to the queries). These archives, named AlleGroningers[9]), contain the birth certificate of Henriette Kapteyn (see Figure 0). Clearly her name is spelled with the an ‘e’ at the end. Note also that no diaeresis or umlaut is used over the second ‘e’. The same is true for the first ‘e’ in Mariette. Henriette studied in Groningen and in Amsterdam and obtained the degree ‘Candi- daats’3 in law and an ‘MO’4 in English [10]. Henriette Kapteyn married Danish as- tronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung (1873–1967) on May 16, 1913. The marriage certificate of Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henriette Kapteyn is also available in the Archives of the city of Groningen (see Figure 1 and 2 [11]). There her first name is also spelled Henriette. I will adopt that spelling throughout the following. Connected to this is the issue of whether the last name is spelled Kapteyn or Kapteijn. J.C. Kapteyn always used the ‘y’ and his and her name are also spelled in that manner in the biography that Henriette wrote. Sufficient reason to adopt it throughout the following. It is also spelled Kapteyn in the birth certificate of Henriette (see Figure 0). However, in the marriage certificate in Figure 1 and 2 the names of Henriette herself, that of her father and her uncle Frederik Willem Hendrik Kapteyn (1853–1920) (who acted as an official witness) were spelled Kapteijn. Note that all signatures do not have dots over the ‘y’ which would be required to make it an ‘ij’. The site AlleGroningers has more official 3 This is the title obtained more or less halfway through academic studies, roughly comparable to what nowadays would be the Bachelor degree. 4 MO stands for Middelbaar Onderwijs (secondary education) and the diploma qualified for teaching at gymnasia and high-schools. Preface iii Fig. 0 Reproduction of Henriette Kapteyn’s birth certificate from the archives of the city of Groningen. documents of Kapteyn and his relatives, but most can be found by searching for
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