Jaan Einasto

Jaan Einasto (born 23 February 1929, in Tartu) is an Estonian astrophysicist and one of the discoverers of the large-scale structure of the Universe.[3]

Jaan Einasto
Jaan Einasto with his Marcel Grossmann Award, 2009
Born
Jaan Eisenschmidt

(1929-02-23) 23 February 1929
Tartu, Estonia
Alma materUniversity of Tartu (Ph.D., 1955)
Known forPioneer in the branch of astronomy known as near-field cosmology[1]
AwardsEstonia National Science Award (1982, 1998, 2003, 2007)
Marcel Grossmann Award (2009)
Ambartsumian International Prize (2012)
Gruber Prize in Cosmology[2] (2014)
Scientific career
FieldsCosmology

Born Jaan Eisenschmidt in Tartu, the name "Einasto" is an anagram of "Estonia" (it was chosen by his patriotic father in the 1930s to replace the family's German name).[4] He attended the University of Tartu, where he received the Ph.D. equivalent in 1955 and a senior research doctorate in 1972. From 1952, he has worked as a scientist at the Tartu Observatory (1977–1998) Head of the Department of Cosmology; from 1992–1995, he was Professor of Cosmology at the University of Tartu. For a long time, he was Head of the Division of Astronomy and Physics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences in Tallinn. Einasto is a member of the Academia Europaea, the European Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society; he has received three Estonian National Science Awards.

  • 1947 Tartu Secondary School No. 1
  • 1952 University of Tartu
  • 1955 Cand.Sc. in physics and mathematics
  • 1972 D.Sc. in physics and mathematics
  • 1992 Professor

Since 1991 he is member of Academia Europaea. Since 1994 he is member of the Royal British Society of Astronomy.

The asteroid 11577 Einasto, discovered in 1994, is named in his honour.

In 1974, in a seminal work with Kaasik and Saar at the Tartu Observatory, Einasto argued that "it is necessary to adopt an alternative hypothesis: that the clusters of galaxies are stabilised by hidden matter."[5] This was a key paper in recognizing that a hidden matter, i.e., dark matter, could explain observational anomalies in astronomy.[6]

See also

References
  1. "Jaan Einasto". Physics Today. 23 Feb 2017. doi:10.1063/PT.5.031422.
  2. Tamme, Virge (2014-06-11). "Jaan Einasto received the Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize". ut.ee. University of Tartu. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  3. "Jaan Einasto". Physics Today. 2017. doi:10.1063/PT.5.031422.
  4. Einasto, Jaan (2013). Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story. World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4551-05-2. In the 1930s [the] Estonian government started a campaign to change German names to Estonian ones. So our family name was also changed. My father was a real patriot of Estonia, so he invented the name "Einasto", which is a permutation of "Estonia". The name was patented, so nobody else can have this name. In this respect our family name is unique.
  5. EINASTO, JAAN; KAASIK, ANTS; SAAR, ENN (26 July 1974). "Dynamic evidence on massive coronas of galaxies". Nature. 250 (5464): 309–310. Bibcode:1974Natur.250..309E. doi:10.1038/250309a0.
  6. de Swart, Jaco; Bertone, Gianfranco; van Dongen, Jeroen (28 February 2017). "How Dark Matter Came to Matter". Nature Astronomy. 1 (3): 0059. arXiv:1703.00013. Bibcode:2017NatAs...1E..59D. doi:10.1038/s41550-017-0059.
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