Astrid Elbers

University of Antwerp | UA · Linguapolis - Instituut voor Taal en Communicatie

Since the early twentieth century, Dutch astronomy has been preoccupied with one simple question: What is the structure of the Milky Way? Answering this question, however, was a different story. Firstly, the Dutch cloudy climate severely hindered (optical) astronomical observations. And secondly, the largest part of the Milky Way was inaccessible f...

In May 1951, the Dutch succeeded in detecting the 21-cm hydrogen line . This detection was instrumental in obtaining a grant from the Dutch Organisation for Pure Scientific Research for the construction of a large radio telescope with a dish of 25 m. When it came to choosing a location, there were many difficulties to overcome. First of all, it too...

Radio astronomy came into existence during the Second World War . In most countries, the initiative was taken by people working in the war industry, because the technologies of radar and radio telescopes were very similar. In the Netherlands, this was different. In 1941, the Leiden astronomer Jan Hendrik Oort read an article written by the American...

As soon as the first observations with the radio telescope in Dwingeloo were made, ideas came up to build an even larger and better instrument. As it was estimated that this instrument would be very expensive, the Dutch contacted the Belgians in 1958 to cooperate and to share the costs. Unfortunately, this cooperation failed when the Belgians withd...

The reason why the Dutch started thinking about building another radio telescope in the late 1950s was that they needed higher resolving power. The first design for this new telescope dated from 1961 and was a large cross antenna. Thereafter, it was changed three times. The Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope that was inaugurated in 1970 looked ve...

Radio astronomy was born during the Second World War, but as this book explains, the history of early Dutch radio astronomy is in several respects rather anomalous in comparison to the development of radio astronomy in other countries. The author describes how these very differences led the Netherlands to become one of the world leaders in radio as...

In the first decade following the Second World War, one of the major post‐war radio astronomy groups was established in the Netherlands. This paper analyses how Dutch radio astronomy evolved in barely 10 years time from a new and uncertain area of research into a highly esteemed and money consuming field. Firstly, in Dutch post‐war politics science...

Between pragmatism and idealism: relations between Dutch astronomers and their Soviet colleagues during the Cold WarDuring the Cold War, outstanding astronomical research was conducted in the Netherlands, as well as in the Soviet Union. As there was a considerable overlap in research themes, astronomers in both countries stood to benefit from an ex...