Uco van Wijk
Encyclopedia
Uco van Wijk was a Dutch
astronomer
and educator who founded the astronomy program at the University of Maryland
and was instrumental in bringing Gart Westerhout
from Holland to become Department Head.
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
and educator who founded the astronomy program at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
and was instrumental in bringing Gart Westerhout
Gart Westerhout
Gart Westerhout is a Dutch astronomer. Well before completing his university studies at Leiden, he had already become well-established internationally as a radio astronomer in The Netherlands, specializing in studies of radio sources and the Milky Way Galaxy based on observations of radio...
from Holland to become Department Head.
Honors
- The crater Van WijkVan Wijk (crater)Van Wijk is a small lunar impact crater that lies in the southern part of the far side of the Moon. It is located to the north-northwest of the huge walled plain Schrödinger, and to the southwest of the crater Fechner....
on the MoonMoonThe Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
is named after him. - The astronomy library at the University of Maryland is named after him.
- The Sundialhttp://www.umd.edu/traditions/gr/images/sundial.jpg located in the center of McKeldin MallMcKeldin MallMcKeldin Mall is a nine-acre area in the heart of the campus of the University of Maryland, College Park. Named after Theodore McKeldin, the former Governor of Maryland, McKeldin Mall is the largest academic mall in the United States.-Description:...
on the campus was originally a gift from the Class of 1965, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and friends of Professor Uco Van Wijk. It was renovated with donations from the Class of 1990.
