Dirk Brouwer was Dutch, but spent most of his working life in America. He was born in Rotterdam on September 1 1902 and was trained at Leiden University under the guidance of the great cosmologist Willem de Sitter. His first research program was an investigation of the movements of Jupiter's Galilean satellites, and his doctoral thesis in 1927 was a discussion of the long series of observations of the satellites carried out by RTA Innes.
In 1928 he went to the United States and joined the staff of Yale University, working with E.W. Brown on the theory of the movements of the Moon. At that time it was thought that small irregularities in the lunar motion could be explained by variations in the Earth's rate of rotation; to check this, Brown and Brouwer undertook an extensive analysis of observations of lunar occultations. Many of these observations were made by amateurs, and Brouwer became a very firm supporter of amateur astronomy. His interest in the Earth's rotation was maintained...
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Bibliography
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Moore, P. (1997). Brouwer, dirk (1902–1966). In: Encyclopedia of Planetary Science. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4520-4_46
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