| 词条 | Richard van der Riet Woolley |
| 释义 |
|name = Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley |image = |birth_date = {{birth date|1906|4|24|df=y}} |birth_place = Weymouth, Dorset, England |death_date = {{death date and age|1986|12|24|1906|4|24|df=y}} |death_place = Somerset West, South Africa |nationality = United Kingdom |field = Astronomy |work_institutions = |alma_mater = University of Cape Town University of Cambridge |doctoral_advisor = |doctoral_students = |known_for = Astronomer Royal |influences = |influenced = |prizes = Fellow of the Royal Society[1] |footnotes = |signature = }} Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley OBE FRS[1] (24 April 1906 – 24 December 1986)[2] was an English astronomer who became Astronomer Royal. His mother's maiden name was Van der Riet. BiographyWoolley was born in Weymouth, Dorset and attended Allhallows College, then in Honiton, for about 18 months, but then moved with his parents to South Africa upon their retirement. There he attended and received his degree from the University of Cape Town. Woolley returned to the United Kingdom and studied at University of Cambridge. After two years at Mount Wilson Observatory he again returned to the United Kingdom in 1931.[3] [4][5][6]From 1937 to 1939 he was Senior Assistant Observer and John Couch Adams Astronomer at the Cambridge Observatory.[7] Woolley specialized in solar astronomy and in 1939 he was appointed director of the Commonwealth Solar Observatory in Canberra, Australia. He later returned to the United Kingdom to take up his appointment as Astronomer Royal from 1956 to 1971.[3] Woolley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1953 and won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1971.[8] From 1972 to 1976 he was director of the new South African Astronomical Observatory. He retired in the late 1970s and spent most of his retirement in South Africa. Woolley was appointed an OBE in 1953 and knighted in 1963.[9] Views on the practicality of space flightWoolley is known for his initial disbelief in the practicalities of space flight, a notion he shared with Sir Harold Spencer Jones, his predecessor as Astronomer Royal. In a 1936 book review of P.E. Cleator's Rockets Through Space,[10] Woolley wrote: "The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished" [11] On appointment as Astronomer Royal, he reiterated his long-held view that "space travel is utter bilge". Speaking to Time in 1956, Woolley noted "It's utter bilge. I don't think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing . . . What good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing first-class astronomical equipment we would learn much more about the universe . . . It is all rather rot" [12] Woolley's protestations came just one year prior to the launch of Sputnik 1, five years before the start of the Apollo Program, and thirteen years before the first manned landing on the Moon. In a 1995 letter to New Scientist, J.A. Terry and John Rudge pointed out that the quotation ascribed to Woolley is actually a misquotation of what he actually said (as they had heard themselves on Radio Newsreel). Terry and Rudge report that Woolley's statement was: "All this talk about space travel is utter bilge, really." Woolley went on to say: "It would cost as much as a major war just to put a man on the moon." Terry and Rudge assert that Woolley's latter prediction turned out to be quite accurate, and state that the deletion of the first four words of the quotation by newspaper editors was in reaction to the fact that it was those self-same newspaper's hyperbolic articles, talking about space travel, that Woolley was criticising. "Anyone", said Terry and Rudge, "who had seen the flamboyant articles about space travel and the imminent colonisation of the moon and planets that were splashed all over the newspapers in 1956, with science fiction-style illustrations, must have been immediately aware of what the new Astronomer Royal was riled about."[13] Publications
References1. ^1 {{Cite journal | last1 = McCrea | first1 = W. | authorlink = William McCrea (astronomer)| doi = 10.1098/rsbm.1988.0028 | title = Richard van der Riet Woolley. 24 April 1906-24 December 1986 | journal = Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society | volume = 34 | pages = 922–926 | year = 1988 | jstor = 770071| pmid = | pmc = |bibcode = 1988BMFRS..34..922M }} 2. ^GRO Register of Births: JUN 1906 5a 296 WEYMOUTH - Richard Van der Riet Woolley 3. ^1 {{ cite journal | last = Lynden-Bell | first = Donald | title = Professor Sir Richard Woolley, OBE, ScD, FRS, 1906–86 | journal = Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society | volume = 28 | issue=4 | pages = 546–551 | date = 1987 | bibcode = 1987QJRAS..28..546B }} 4. ^{{ cite journal | last = Stickland | first = D. J. | title = Obituary: Sir Richard Woolley | journal = The Observatory | volume = 107 | issue = 1077 | page = 99 | date = 1987 | bibcode = 1987Obs...107...99S }} 5. ^{{ cite journal | last = Feast | first = M. W. | title = Sir Richard Woolley, An Appreciation | journal = Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa | volume = 46 | issue = 1 | pages = 4–6 | date = 1987 | bibcode = 1987MNSSA..46....4F }} 6. ^{{ cite journal | last1 = Hyland | first1 = A. R. | last2 = Faulkner | first2 = D. J. | title = From the Sun to the Universe–The Woolley and Bok Directorships at Mount Stromlo | journal = Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia | volume = 8 | issue = 2 | pages = 216–228 | date = 1989 | bibcode = 1989PASAu...8..216H| doi = 10.1017/S1323358000023353 }} 7. ^Stratton, F.J.M. "The History of the Cambridge Observatories" Annals of the Solar Physics Observatory, Cambridge (1949) 8. ^{{ cite journal | last = Lovell | first = Bernard | title = The Gold Medal: Sir Richard Woolley | journal = Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society | volume = 12 | issue = 2 | pages = 135–137 | date = 1971 | bibcode = 1971QJRAS..12..135L }} 9. ^WOOLLEY, Sir Richard (van der Riet), Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014 10. ^{{cite book | last=Cleator | first=P.E. | title=Rockets Through Space; or, The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel | location=London | publisher=G.Allen & Unwin, ltd. | date=1936 | oclc=123158265}} 11. ^{{cite journal | last=Woolley | first=Richard | title=Book Review: Rockets in Space, by P.E. Cleator | journal=Nature | volume=137 | issue=3463 | pages=417–470 | doi= 10.1038/137417a0 | date=1936 |bibcode = 1936Natur.137..417. }} 12. ^{{cite news | author=Staff writers | title=Utter Bilge? | url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,861825,00.html | work=Time | date=16 January 1956| accessdate=2008-02-24}} 13. ^{{cite news|work=New Scientist|title=Current affairs|url=http://newscientist.com/article/mg14719956.100|author=J.A. Terry|author2=John Rudge|last-author-amp=yes|date=16 September 1995}} External links
16 : 1906 births|1986 deaths|Astronomers Royal|20th-century astronomers|English astronomers|English people of Dutch descent|Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science|Fellows of the Royal Society|People from Weymouth, Dorset|University of Cape Town alumni|Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society|Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge|People educated at Allhallows College|Presidents of the Royal Astronomical Society|Knights Bachelor|Officers of the Order of the British Empire |
| 随便看 |
|
开放百科全书收录14589846条英语、德语、日语等多语种百科知识，基本涵盖了大多数领域的百科知识，是一部内容自由、开放的电子版国际百科全书。