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Jaan Einasto

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Jaan Einasto
Jaan Einasto with his Marcel Grossmann Award, 2009
Born (1929-02-23) 23 February 1929 (age 95)
Tartu, Estonia
AwardsGruber Foundation Cosmology Prize[1] (2014)
Scientific career
FieldsCosmology

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.[2] He is a patriotic Estonian; 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).[3]

Born in Tartu, 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; in 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
  • 1991 Member of Academia Europaea
  • 1994 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."[4] This was a key paper in recognizing that a hidden matter, i.e., dark matter, could explain observational anomalies in astronomy.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Tamme, Virge. "Jaan Einasto received the Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize". ut.ee. University of Tartu. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  2. ^ http://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.031422/full/
  3. ^ Einasto, Jaan (2013). Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story. World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4551-05-2. In the 1930's [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.
  4. ^ 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.
  5. ^ 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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