Gart Westerhout

He emigrated to the United States, became a naturalized citizen, and held a number of important scientific and management positions in academic and government institutions.

While they were students, Wim Brouw, Mike Davis, Ernst Raimond, Whitney Shane and Jaap Tinbergen [de] worked with him.

His pioneering work, with colleagues, showed the first hints of spiral structure in the interstellar gas, revealed differential rotation in our Galaxy, and established a revised Galactic coordinate system still in use today.

Arriving in 1962 as the first Director of a fledgling Astronomy Program at the University of Maryland (started by Uco van Wijk), he grew it into a major department granting masters and doctorate degrees.

From 1973 to '77 he was Professor of Astronomy at the University of Maryland, temporarily becoming Visiting Astronomer at the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany 1973-74.