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Jaan Einasto

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Jaan Einasto
Jaan Einasto with his Marcel Grossmann Award, 2009
Born
Jaan Eisenschmidt

(1929-02-23) 23 February 1929 (age 95)
Alma materUniversity of Tartu (Ph.D., 1955)
Known forPioneer in the branch of astronomy known as near-field cosmology[2]
AwardsEstonia National Science Award (1982, 1998, 2003, 2007)
Marcel Grossmann Award (2009)
Ambartsumian International Prize (2012)
Gruber Prize in Cosmology[1] (2014)
Scientific career
FieldsCosmology

Jaan Einasto (born 23 February 1929) is an Estonian astrophysicist and one of the discoverers of the large-scale structure of the Universe.[3]

Family and early life

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Born Jaan Eisenschmidt in Tartu, the name "Einasto" is an anagram of "Estonia" (it was chosen by his patriotic father in the 1930s to replace the family's German name).[4]

Einasto married and had 3 children, 2 daughters and the youngest, a son. His daughter, Maret, is also an astrophysicist, who collaborates with her father.[5]

Education and career

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He attended the University of Tartu, where he received the Ph.D. equivalent in 1955 and a senior research doctorate in 1972. From 1952, he has worked as a scientist at the Tartu Observatory (1977–1998) Head of the Department of Cosmology; from 1992–1995, he was Professor of Cosmology at the University of Tartu. For a long time, he was Head of the Division of Astronomy and Physics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences in Tallinn. Einasto is a member of the Academia Europaea, the European Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society; he has received three Estonian National Science Awards.

  • 1947 Tartu Secondary School No. 1
  • 1952 University of Tartu
  • 1955 Cand.Sc. in physics and mathematics
  • 1972 D.Sc. in physics and mathematics
  • 1992 Professor

Since 1991 he is member of Academia Europaea. Since 1994 he is member of the Royal Astronomical Society.

In 1974, in a seminal work with Kaasik and Saar at the Tartu Observatory, Einasto argued that "it is necessary to adopt an alternative hypothesis: that the clusters of galaxies are stabilised by hidden matter."[6] This was a key paper in recognizing that a hidden matter, i.e., dark matter, could explain observational anomalies in astronomy.[7][8]

Einasto showed in 1977 at a Symposium in Tallinn (Estonia) that the universe has a cell structure, in which the observed matter surrounds huge empty voids.[9]

Awards, honours, legacy

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The asteroid 11577 Einasto, discovered in 1994, is named in his honour.

The Einasto Supercluster, a galaxy supercluster discovered in 2024, is named in his honour.[10]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Tamme, Virge (2014-06-11). "Jaan Einasto received the Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize". ut.ee. University of Tartu. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  2. ^ "Jaan Einasto". Physics Today (2): 9316. 23 Feb 2017. Bibcode:2017PhT..2017b9316.. doi:10.1063/PT.5.031422.
  3. ^ "Jaan Einasto". Physics Today (2): 9316. 2017. Bibcode:2017PhT..2017b9316.. doi:10.1063/PT.5.031422.
  4. ^ Einasto, Jaan (2013). Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story. World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4551-05-2. In the 1930s [the] Estonian government started a campaign to change German names to Estonian ones. So our family name was also changed. My father was a real patriot of Estonia, so he invented the name "Einasto", which is a permutation of "Estonia". The name was patented, so nobody else can have this name. In this respect our family name is unique.
  5. ^ Jaan Einasto (11 May 2018). "Cosmology Paradigm Changes" (PDF). Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. 56 (published September 2018): 1–39. Bibcode:2018ARA&A..56....1E. doi:10.1146/annurev-astro-081817-051748.
  6. ^ EINASTO, JAAN; KAASIK, ANTS; SAAR, ENN (26 July 1974). "Dynamic evidence on massive coronas of galaxies". Nature. 250 (5464): 309–310. Bibcode:1974Natur.250..309E. doi:10.1038/250309a0. S2CID 4293391.
  7. ^ de Swart, Jaco (1 August 2024). "Five decades of missing mass". Physics Today. 77: 34–43. doi:10.1063/pt.ozhk.lfeb.
  8. ^ de Swart, Jaco; Bertone, Gianfranco; van Dongen, Jeroen (28 February 2017). "How Dark Matter Came to Matter". Nature Astronomy. 1 (3): 0059. arXiv:1703.00013. Bibcode:2017NatAs...1E..59D. doi:10.1038/s41550-017-0059. S2CID 119092226.
  9. ^ Joever, Mihkel; Einasto, Jaan (1978). "Has the universe the cell structure?". The Large Scale Structure of the Universe; Proceedings of the Symposium, Tallin, Estonian SSR. International Astronomical Union: Symposium no. 79, Reidel: https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1978IAUS...79..241J.
  10. ^ Robert Lea (20 March 2024). "Scientists find galaxy supercluster as massive as 26 quadrillion suns". SPACE.com. Yahoo! News. 26-150001305.
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