Gart Westerhout

Gart Westerhout (15 June 1927 – 14 October 2012) was a Dutch-American 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 continuum emissions and 21-cm spectral line radiation that originates in interstellar hydrogen. He emigrated to the United States, became a naturalized citizen, and held a number of important scientific and management positions in academic and government institutions.

Westerhout was born in The Hague, and studied at the University of Leiden (Sterrewacht te Leiden) with Hendrik van de Hulst and Jan Hendrik Oort. Contemporaries and colleagues in the Netherlands included Hugo van Woerden, C. Lex Muller, Maarten Schmidt, Kwee Kiem King, Lodewijk Woltjer, and Charles L. Seeger, III (son of the ethnomusicologist, brother of Pete Seeger and half-brother of Mike Seeger). While they were students, Wim Brouw, Mike Davis, Ernst Raimond, Whitney Shane and Jaap Tinbergen () worked with him.

He was awarded Physics and Astronomy degrees: Cand. (1950) and Drs. (1954) and was awarded a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Physics in 1958. Notable scientific achievements included: the significant Westerhout Catalog of continuum emission radio sources, by which "W" numerical designations such sources are still referenced (see for example Westerhout 49), done with the then-new Dwingeloo telescope; and his survey of neutral hydrogen in the outer parts of our Galaxy. His pioneering work, with colleagues, showed the first hints of spiral structure in the interstellar gas, revealed differential rotation in our Galaxy, and established a revised Galactic coordinate system still in use today.

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