Master of Galactic Astronomy: A Biography of Jan Hendrik Oort

Pieter C. van der Kruit is emeritus Jacobus C. Kapteyn Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute of the  University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD in astronomy from Leiden University in 1971 under Jan Hendrik Oort. He held a prestigious Carnegie postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories in Pasadena, California, before moving to the University of Groningen in 1975. He has held visiting positions at various institutions, including the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra, Australia; the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA; the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife, Spain, and the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. His research concerns structure and dynamics of disks in galaxies. He has published over 160 papers, more than half as lead or sole author, contributed substantially to over 20 more, and authored or edited eight books.