Peter Van de Kamp - Life

Life

Van de Kamp studied at the University of Utrecht and started his professional career at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen working with Pieter Johannes van Rhijn. In 1923 he left for the Leander McCormick Observatory at the University of Virginia for a year's residence supported by the Draper Fund of the National Academy of Sciences. There he assisted Samuel Alfred Mitchell with his extensive stellar parallax program and Harold Alden with the lengthy Boss star project.

The following year Van de Kamp went to the Lick Observatory in California as a Kellogg fellow. There he received his Ph.D. from the University of California in Astronomy in June 1925. The next year he also received a PhD from the University of Groningen. Van de Kamp returned to McCormick on October 1, 1925 to take up the position left vacant by Harold Alden, who had just taken up the directorship of the Yale University Observatory Southern Station in Johannesburg, South Africa.

His work consisted of assisting with the parallax program and continuing the proper motion work that he and Alden had begun. Van de Kamp and Alexander N. Vyssotsky spent eight years measuring 18,000 proper motions. He did additional, smaller projects individually, including an investigation for general and selective absorption of light within the Galaxy.