Pieter Hendrik van Cittert

Portrait of van Cittert, 1925-35

In this Dutch name, the surname is van Cittert, not Cittert.

In this article, Dutch capitalization is used for tussenvoegsels in Dutch family names. The first letter in van Cittert is capitalized unless it is preceded by a name, initial or title of nobility.

Pieter Hendrik van Cittert (30 May 1889– 8 October 1959) was a Dutch physicist and science historian. He is known for proving the van Cittert–Zernike theorem about the coherence of electromagnetic radiation in 1934.^[1] He also founded the University Museum in Utrecht.

Life

Early life

Pieter Hendrik van Cittert was born in 1889 in Gouda, Netherlands, to Benjamin Pieter van Cittert and Petronella Antonia Huber.

Career

In 1912, van Cittert joined the Physics Laboratory at the University of Utrecht. In 1918, he discovered thousands of historical scientific instruments from the eighteenth-century Physics Society in Utrecht. This collection was the starting point for the University Museum, which Hendrik van Cittert founded in 1928.^[2] He was promoted in 1919.

In 1921, van Cittert and Leonard Ornstein were among the founders of the Dutch Physical Society^[3] (NNV). Hendrik van Cittert was a part-time teacher of physics at HOBS in Utrecht (1916–1950). He founded the Physics Laboratory in Utrecht (1922–1950) and became the first director^[4] of the University Museum of Utrecht (1951–1955).

Personal life

Van Cittert married his colleague, the physicist Johanna Geertruida van Cittert-Eymers in 1938.^[5]

He died in 8 October 1959 in Utrecht.

References

1. Leonard Mandel; Emil Wolf (1995). Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics (illustrated, reprinted ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-521-41711-2. Extract of page 188
2. Cabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe. BRILL. 2013. p. 24. ISBN 978-90-04-25297-4. Extract of page 24
3. "Home". nnv.nl.
4. Cabinets of Experimental Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Edited by Jim Bennett & Sofia Talas. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2013. ISSN 1872-0684.
5. Deiman, Jan C. (2013). "Pieter H. van Cittert (1889–1959) en Johanna G. van Cittert-Eymers (1903–1988): natuurkundigen, museologen en wetenschapshistorici avant la lettre". Studium (in Dutch). 6 (3/4): 263–266.