Hermann Brück

Hermann Alexander Brück CBE FRSE (15 August 1905 in Berlin, Germany – 4 March 2000 in Penicuik, Scotland) was a German-born astronomer who spent the great portion of his career in the United Kingdom.

Hermann Brück's father was Hermann Heinrich Brück and his mother, Margaret. Hermann junior was educated at the Kaiserin Augusta Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg, a school specialising in the Classics (Latin and Greek), where he also had excellent teachers in mathematics and physics. Brück, from 1924 to 1928, was educated at the University of Kiel, the University of Bonn, and the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. His doctoral work on the wave mechanics of crystals was under the supervision of Arnold Sommerfeld. His interest in astronomy was gained early in life, and he turned his attention to astronomical spectroscopy. He was granted his Ph.D. at Munich in 1928.

Upon graduation from Munich, Brück followed his friend Albrecht Unsöld to the Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory; Unsöld had earned his doctorate the year before, also under Sommerfeld. While there, he participated in the physics colloquium at the Humboldt University of Berlin with the physicists Max von Laue and Albert Einstein and the astronomer Walter Grotrian. With growing difficulties under National Socialism, Brück left Germany in 1936 to take a temporary research assistantship at the Vatican Observatory. In 1937 he moved to the University of Cambridge to join the circle of modern astrophysicists around Arthur Eddington. In time, Brück became Assistant Director of the Observatories and John Couch Adams Astronomer, specializing in solar spectroscopy. Under his tenure, he taught a course in classical astronomy and started the student astronomical society, which fostered the careers of many astronomers.

...
Wikipedia