Biographical Memoirs: Volume 62 (1993)
Chapter: SOURCES
his supervisory capacity as director at Yerkes and LPL. However, as an intensely driven man, Kuiper's perceived hauteur occasionally strained the patience and loyalty of his colleagues and friends.
Two children were born to Gerard and Sarah Kuiper, Paul Hayes in 1941 and Sylvia Lucy Ann in 1947. Both grew to become intelligent, talented, and perceptive adults in the loving household that was the rock of stability in Kuiper's personal life.
Kuiper had a delightful eagerness to share his knowledge and perceptions, a fact that many anecdotes could substantiate. He had a strong aesthetic sense, and on the numerous topics of interest to him Kuiper was a marvelous conversationalist, with a ranging curiosity and a perceptible wit. He commanded wide respect for his achievements, his organizational abilities, and his passion for science. His gift of prodigious energy was matched by one of acute intuition. Kuiper's approach to science was, in fact, highly intuitive, propelled by first-order computation from the first principles of physics, and always a drive for new data.
As an individual who initiated physical studies of the solar system, sometimes in the face of professional criticism, Gerard Kuiper can truly be considered the father of modern planetary astronomy. At the same time, his contributions to stellar astronomy remain a fundamental part of the literature of double-star studies, the nature and statistics of white dwarf and high-proper-motion stars, and infrared stellar spectroscopy.
SOURCES
The principal archive of Kuiper's correspondence, papers, and notebooks is held at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His correspondence and papers related to the years
