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Gerrit Verschuur

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Residence
  
Lakeland, Tennessee

Spouse
  
Joan Schmelz (m. 1986)

Role
  
Scientist


Name
  
Gerrit Verschuur

Fields
  
Radio astronomy

Gerrit Verschuur httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Nationality
  
United States Naturalized 1975

Alma mater
  
Rhodes UniversityUniversity of Manchester

Books
  
Impact!, Interstellar Matters, The Invisible Universe, Hidden attraction, Cosmic catastrophes

Institutions
  

Brief Summary & Visualization of the Marklund Convection - Birkeland Current Process


Gerrit L. Verschuur, PhD, born in 1937 in Cape Town, South Africa, is a naturalized American scientist who is best known for his work in radio astronomy. Though a pioneer in that field—he has 50 years of experience—Verschuur is also an author (he has written about astronomy, natural disasters, and earth sciences), inventor, a self-employed IP Consultant, adjunct professor of physics for the University of Memphis, and a lifetime fan of Manchester United FC Since 1996 he has been the Chief Scientist for Translucent Technologies, LLC; a company which is based in Memphis, Tennessee.

Contents

Gerrit Verschuur wwwbeforetheabstractcomwpcontentuploads2014

In 1992 Verschuur became a resident of the City of Lakeland, which is located in Shelby County, Tennessee, and is northeast of Memphis. In 2001 Verschuur was elected, and served a four-year term as commissioner. In 2007 Verschuur was elected again and is currently serving another term as Commissioner; this one, for two years. At present, Verschuur is also the President of the Garner Lake Association. Since 1986 he has been married to Dr. Joan Schmelz, a fellow scientist whose specialty is solar astronomy, specifically Coronal loops. Verschuur has one son who lives in England.

A frequent lecturer, Verschuur has taught at the University of Manchester, Rhodes University, the universities of Colorado and Maryland, UCLA, and the University of California, Berkeley, among others. He has been an annual speaker at Mid-South Stargaze, which is “the annual amateur astronomers conference and star party held at Rainwater Observatory in French Camp, Mississippi.” In 1971 Verschuur was hired as the first Director of Fiske Planetarium for the University of Colorado at Boulder, and in 1980 he worked with Dr. John Lilly.

In his primary field of study, however, Verschuur "pioneered the measurement of the interstellar magnetic field using the 21-cm Zeeman effect technique." A thing which, according to Virginia Trimble, for the first time allowed astronomers to "measure magnetic strengths and their place-to-place variations with some confidence."

Biography

Gerrit L. Verschuur was born in 1937 in Cape Town, South Africa, at the foot of Table Mountain. In 1936, his parents had emigrated from the Netherlands and settled in Cape Town. Two years after he was born—in 1939—his parents moved again, choosing a suburb of Cape Town named Lakeside. While he was living there, Verschuur attended Muizenberg Junior School. Then, when his parents moved to Port Elizabeth in 1950, he attended Grey Junior and subsequently Grey High School.

After graduation he began a six-year stint at Rhodes University in Grahamstown where he earned a BSc in 1957—Majors: Math, Physics, & Applied math; a BSc(Hons) of Physics in 1958; and a MSc degree of physics, in 1960.

In December 1960 he sailed for Southampton, England on Capetown Castle, a ship owned by the Union Castle Line. It was one of the last passenger mail boats to ply the SA-England route, but was sold for scrap in 1967.

Verschuur has one sibling who still lives in Cape Town.

Current research

Verschuur is at the center of a recent debate over the age of the universe. He claims that images from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (Wmap) are not pictures of the universe in its early form, but rather hydrogen gas clouds in our own galaxy. If he is shown to be correct, much work relating to the Big Bang Theory would be undermined.

On December 10, 2007 his work with respect to COBE, WMAP, and HI, was published in The Astrophysical Journal. However, in a more systematic examination of the maps published that same year in The Physical Review, Land and Slosar find the data do not support the correlation claimed by Verschuur.

Books

  • "The Invisible Universe: The Story of Radio Astronomy."
    Springer-Verlag, New York, 1974
    "Nominated for National book award – then disqualified because I was not a US citizen at the time."
  • "Galactic and Extragalactic Radio Astronomy."
    Springer-Verlag, New York, 1974
    Co-edited with K.I. Kellerman
    ISBN 0-387-06504-0
  • "Cosmic Evolution: An Introduction to Astronomy."
    Houghton Mifflin, 1978
    Co-Author with George B. Field and Cyril Ponnamperuma
    ISBN 0-395-25321-7
  • "Starscapes."
    Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1977
    ISBN 0-316-90030-3
  • "Cosmic Catastrophes."
    Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co., 1978
    ISBN 0-201-08099-0
  • "Interstellar Matters: Essays on Curiosity and Astronomical Discovery."
    Springer-Verlag, 1989
    ISBN 0-387-96814-8
  • "Hidden Attraction: The History and Mystery of Magnetism."
    Oxford University Press, 1996, (First Published 1993)
    ISBN 0-19-510655-5
  • "Impact!: The Threat of Comets and Asteroids."
    Oxford University Press, 1996
    ISBN 0-19-510105-7
  • "The Invisible Universe: The Story of Radio Astronomy."
    Springer, 2nd. ed., 2007
    ISBN 978-0-387-30816-6
  • Encyclopaedia Articles

  • "Interstellar Medium"
    Encyclopædia Britannica
    (15th edition) Volume I-J. pp 790–800, 1973
  • "Interstellar Matter"
    Encyclopædia Britannica
    (Asian edition) 1986
  • "Magnetic Fields and Galactic Structure."
    Reference Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
    Ed. S. Maran, Van Nostrand Rheinhold, New York, 1992
  • References

    Gerrit Verschuur Wikipedia


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