Rudolph Minkowski

Template:Short description Template:Infobox scientist Rudolph Minkowski (born Rudolf Leo Bernhard Minkowski Template:IPAc-en;<ref>"Minkowski". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.</ref> Template:IPA; May 28, 1895 – January 4, 1976) was a German-American astronomer.<ref name="obituary" />

Biography

Asteroids discovered: 1<ref name="MPC-Discoverers" />
1620 Geographos	September 14, 1951

Minkowski was the son of Marie Johanna Siegel and physiologist Oskar Minkowski.<ref>Notable Scientists from 1900 to the Present: I–M</ref><ref>The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography</ref> His uncle was Hermann Minkowski, a mathematician and one of Einstein's teachers in Zürich. Rudolph studied supernovae and, together with Walter Baade, divided them into two classes (Type I and Type II) based on their spectral characteristics.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He and Baade also found optical counterparts to various radio sources.

He headed the National Geographic Society – Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, a photographic atlas of the entire northern sky (and south to declination -22°) down to an apparent magnitude of 22.<ref name="obituary" />

Together with Albert George Wilson, he co-discovered the near-Earth Apollo asteroid 1620 Geographos in 1951.<ref name="springer-Geographos" /> He additionally discovered a correlation between the luminosity of early-type galaxies and their velocity dispersion,<ref>Minkowski, R. (1962), Internal Dispersion of Velocities in Other Galaxies</ref> which was later quantified by Faber and Jackson. He won the Bruce Medal in 1961.<ref name="obituary" /> The lunar crater Minkowski is named after him and his uncle. In the 1940's he created a catalog of nearly 200 planetary nebulae, including Minkowski 2-9,<ref name="Minkowski1946"/> and a dwarf galaxy near NGC 541, known as Minkowski's object, is named after him.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Name	Discovery Year	Type	Ref.
1620 Geographos	1951	Asteroid	<ref name="springer-Geographos" />
M1-42	1946	Planetary nebula	<ref name="Minkowski1946"/>
M1-63	1946	Planetary nebula	<ref name="Minkowski1946"/>
M1-91	1946	Planetary nebula	<ref name="Minkowski1946"/>
M1-92	1946	Protoplanetary nebula	<ref name="Minkowski1946"/>
M2-9	1947	Planetary nebula	<ref name="Minkowski1947"/>
M2-42	1947	Planetary nebula	<ref name="Minkowski1947"/>
M4-18	1959	Planetary nebula Template:Efn	<ref name="Leuenhagen1996"/>