Willem Jacob Luyten - Life

Life

Jacob Luyten was born in Semarang, Java, at the time part of the Dutch East Indies. His mother was Cornelia M. Francken and his father Jacob Luyten, a French teacher.

At the age of 11 he observed Halley's comet, which started his fascination with astronomy. He also had a knack for languages, and eventually could speak nine. In 1912 his family moved back to the Netherlands where he studied astronomy at the University of Amsterdam, receiving his BA in 1918.

He was the first student to earn his PhD (at the age of 22) with Ejnar Hertzsprung at Leiden University. In 1921 he left for the United States where he first worked at the Lick Observatory. From 1923 to 1930 Luytens worked at the Harvard College Observatory eventually working at the observatory's Bloemfontein station. He spent the years 1928-1930 in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where he met and married Willemina H. Miedema on February 5, 1930.

Upon his return to the United States in 1931, he taught at the University of Minnesota from 1931-1967, then served as astronomer emeritus from 1967 until his death.

Luytens studied the proper motions of stars and discovered many white dwarfs. He also discovered some of the Sun's nearest neighbors, including Luyten's star as well as the high–proper motion star system Luyten 726-8, which was soon found to contain the remarkable flare star UV Ceti.