罗伯特·克拉夫特1927—2015

职业生涯

克拉夫特曾担任利克天文台主任（1981–1991年），美国天文学会主席（1974–1976年）和国际天文联合会主席（1997–2000年）。

他于1947年获得了华盛顿大学学士学位，1949年获得华盛顿大学 数学硕士学位，1955年获得加州大学伯克利分校博士学位。

2015年，克拉夫特逝世于圣克鲁兹。

奖项和荣誉

奖项

• 海伦·B·华纳天文学奖 (1962年)
• 亨利·诺里斯·罗素讲座 (1995年)
• 布鲁斯奖章 (2005)
• 美国国家科学院

以他的名字命名的事物

小行星3712

Robert Paul Kraft (June 16, 1927 – May 26, 2015) was an American astronomer. He performed pioneering work on Cepheid variables, stellar rotation, novae, and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. His name is also associated with the Kraft break: the abrupt change in the average rotation rate of main sequence stars around spectral type F8.

Career

Kraft received his B.S. at the University of Washington in 1947, M.S. in mathematics at the University of Washington in 1949, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kraft began working at University of California, Santa Cruz in 1967, where he served as director of the Lick Observatory from 1981–1991. During this time, he oversaw the observatory and university's involvement in the construction of the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. He also served as president of the American Astronomical Society (1974–1976) and president of the International Astronomical Union (1997–2000).

From 1956 until about 1965, he focused his research efforts on cataclysmic variables (CVs). In particular, he discovered that all of these stars are binary systems containing a low-mass star and a white dwarf.

Before his death in 2015, Kraft had focused his research on globular clusters and galactic halos, specifically differences between stars in the two regions.

Honors

Awards

• Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (1962)
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1995)
• Bruce Medal (2005)
• National Academy of Sciences

Named after him

Asteroid 3712 Kraft