Gerrit Verschuur

Gerrit L. Verschuur
Gerrit L. Verschuur in 1999
Born1937
Cape Town
NationalityAmerican
Naturalized 1975
Alma materRhodes University
University of Manchester
Scientific career
FieldsRadio astronomy
InstitutionsUniversity of Memphis

Gerrit L. Verschuur (born in 1937 in Cape Town, South Africa) is an American scientist who is best known for his work in radio astronomy. Though a pioneer in that field, Verschuur is also an author (he has written about astronomy, natural disasters, and earth sciences), inventor, adjunct professor of physics for the University of Memphis, and Astronomer Emeritus - Arecibo Observatory and now semi-retired. He served for a time as the Chief Scientist for Translucent Technologies, LLC; a company which is based in Memphis, Tennessee.[1]

In 1992 Verschuur became a resident of the City of Lakeland, which is located in Shelby County, Tennessee, northwest of Memphis. In 2001 Verschuur was elected, and served a four-year term as commissioner. In 2007 he was elected again and served for a total of 10 years. In Lakeland, Verschuur was also the President of the Garner Lake Association[permanent dead link]. Since 1986 he has been married to Dr. Joan Schmelz, a fellow scientist whose specialty is solar astronomy, specifically coronal loops.[2] Verschuur has one son who lives in England.[1]

During his years living beside the lake in Lakeland he made a fundamental discovery concerning the manner in which light interacts with a so-called Secchi Disk that is used to measure the transparency of lake and ocean waters. The disk had been invented in the mid-nineteenth century by a Jesuit priest (Angela Secchi) but no one before Verschuur had understand the optics underlying the measurement technique.[3]

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.[4] He has been an annual speaker at Mid-South Stargaze, "the annual amateur astronomers conference and star party held at Rainwater Observatory in French Camp, Mississippi."[5] In 1971 Verschuur was hired as the first Director of Fiske Planetarium for the University of Colorado at Boulder,[6] and in 1980 he worked with Dr. John C. Lilly.[4]

In his primary field of study Verschuur "pioneered the measurement of the interstellar magnetic field using the 21-cm Zeeman effect technique."[7] 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."[8]

  1. ^ a b Uncommonly Lakeland Archived July 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Women in science – Earth and Space – Dr. Joan T. Schmelz Archived December 15, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/07438149709354305
  4. ^ a b "Jepson School of Leadership Studies: Jepson Studies in Leadership". Archived from the original on December 2, 2007. Retrieved December 10, 2007. (See: Verschuur)
  5. ^ Mid-South Star Gaze Archived October 9, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ History // Fiske Planetarium Archived June 3, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "Our Place In Space: The Implications Of Impact Catastrophes On Human Thought And Behaviour". Archived from the original on August 6, 2007. Retrieved October 15, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. ^ http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/beamline/26/1/26-1-trimble.pdf (Beamline, Spring/Summer 1996, Vol. 26, No. 1, pages 40–41.)