author
Daniel Kirkwood
1814–1895
Best remembered for discovering the mysterious gaps in the asteroid belt that now bear his name, he helped turn orbital oddities into one of astronomy’s classic insights. His long teaching career also made him a central figure in 19th-century American science education.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Maryland in 1814, Daniel Kirkwood became an American astronomer and mathematician known above all for explaining the strange low-density regions in the asteroid belt now called the Kirkwood gaps. His work connected those gaps to Jupiter’s gravitational influence, and he also wrote about the rings of Saturn and other problems in celestial mechanics.
Kirkwood taught mathematics for much of his life, serving at Delaware College and then spending most of his career at Indiana University, where he became one of the school’s most respected scholars. After retiring, he later lectured in astronomy at Stanford University. His published work was extensive, with more than a hundred papers and several books.
His reputation lasted well beyond his lifetime. Kirkwood Observatory at Indiana University was named in his honor, and his name was also given to a lunar crater and to an asteroid—fitting tributes for a scientist who helped readers and students see order in the solar system.