Maarten Schmidt stared at the strange star-shaped object and saw something no one had ever seen before. He saw the edge of the universe.
Born in Groningen, Netherlands in 1929, Schmidt became a Dutch-American astronomer who forever changed our understanding of the universe. He died on September 17, 2022 in Fresno, California. But his legacy is not the date of his birth or death. It’s his discovery.
In 1963, Schmidt determined the wavelength of radiation from quasars, or quasars, as they were then called. His analysis showed that these were not stars. They were something else entirely. They are distant, ancient beings and incredibly powerful.
Before Schmidt, astronomers were confused. Quasars look like stars when viewed through a telescope. But their light spectra were wrong. Schmidt saw patterns in the messy lines of light. He recognized them as hydrogen lines, but they were shifted.
This shift wasn’t natural. This is the Doppler effect. The light was stretched because the object is moving away from us. Fast.
Quasars are receding so quickly and are so far away that their light may have been traveling up to 15 billion years for their light to reach Earth.
This means that quasars are the most distant objects ever observed. They are also among the oldest. Schmidt’s work led directly to the theory that quasars may be galaxies in the early stages of formation. He looked into a telescope and saw a baby galaxy.
This challenged accepted theories about the age and origin of the universe. If these objects are so far away, the universe must be older and more dynamic than previously thought.
Schmidt’s journey began in Europe. He studied at the University of Groningen and the University of Leiden. He earned his Ph.D. in Leiden in 1956. After that, he worked as a scientific officer at the Leiden Observatory until 1959.
he moved to the United States in 1959. He joined the staff of the Hale Observatories in California. These facilities later became the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories. He also joined faculty of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.
His early work had nothing to do with quasars. It was about home. He created a mathematical model of the Milky Way Galaxy. He used all available data on the distribution of stars, interstellar gas and dust. This model helped astronomers understand the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy. It explained its dynamical properties. It gives us a clearer map of our own backyard.
But the quasar work was bigger. It changes the scale of everything.
Schmidt and his colleagues studied extragalactic phenomena in the 1960s. They found that quasars are moving away faster than any other known object. The implications were staggering. These are not just far away rocks. They are relics from the beginning of time.
His interpretation suggested that looking at quasars is like going back in time. We see the universe as it was billions of years ago.
Schmidt’s leadership continued after his major discoveries, Schmidt continued to continued. From 1978 to 1980, he served as the last director of the Hale Observatories. He oversaw Palomar and Mt. Wilson’s administrative divisions.
He is still active in the scientific community. He served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 1984 to 1986. In the years 1983–1995, he served on the board of the Union of Astronomical Universities. He has been the chairman of the committee for the past three years.
But it all goes back to that moment in 1963.
