Daily Image
20-03-2010
Herre Rinia (2nd from right), born 20 March 1905 in Kornwerd, Friesland
| Submitter: | Richard Strom |
| Description: | When the founder and first director of the Philips NatLab, Gilles Holst, retired in 1946, Herre Rinia was appointed co-director with physicist Hendrik Casimir (left) and chemist Evert Verwey (right). Described as: engineer, researcher, inventor, maestro, guru – Rinia’s specialties were optics and mechanics (with over 40 patents on topics from Schmidt lenses to spiral-groove bearings). Rinia brought an engineer’s vision to the SRZM board, and provided direct access to Philips know-how. Even as a child he displayed a knack for asking startling, unorthodox questions. (Why, he wondered, does an object sliding on ice go so far? – truly a query for a Frisian schoolboy!) Rinia’s contacts with astronomers began as early as the 1930s, and he often advised Leiden Observatory on technical matters. One gets an impression of his attitude toward how some people do research from the remark: They are very clever, those scientists who investigate storms with costly computers and weather balloons, but regard invention of the umbrella as beneath them. (This is one of several portraits of key figures in early Dutch radio astronomy. For some of the background, look here) |
| Copyright: | Philips |
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