Robert Grant Aitken (December 31, 1864 – October 29, 1951) was an American astronomer. Aitken attended Williams College in Massachusetts and graduated with an undergraduate degree in 1887.

Career

From 1887–1891, he worked as a mathematics instructor at Livermore, California, then received his M.A. from Williams College in 1892. He became a professor of mathematics at the College of the Pacific, another liberal arts school. he was awarded the prestigious Bruce Medal in 1926.

  • Elected member of the American Philosophical Society (1919)
  • Bruce Medal (1926)
  • Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1932)
  • Rittenhouse Medal (1934)
  • Honorary Sc.D. from College of the Pacific, Williams College, University of Arizona, and an honorary LL.D. from the University of California

;Named after him

  • Minor planet 3070 Aitken
  • Lunar crater Aitken, part of the very large South Pole-Aitken basin
  • Aitken supercomputer at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA

References

  • Bruce Medal page
  • Awarding of Bruce Medal
  • Awarding of RAS gold medal
  • Biographical Memoir (1958) by Van Den Bos at the National academy of Sciences
  • Double Star Observer, Cataloguer, Statistician, and Observatory Director
  • Additional Photos from the Emilio Segre Visual Archive, American Institute of Physics
  • Portrait of Robert G. Aitken from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections
  • Digital version of The Binary Stars published by Dover in 1964

Obituaries

  • IrAJ 2 (1952) 27 (one paragraph)
  • JO 35 (1952) 25 (in French)
  • JRASC 46 (1952) 28
  • MNRAS 112 (1952) 271
  • PASP 64 (1952) 5