The Lake County Astronomical Society

Astronomy Bio...Paul Ledoux and Albert König

Paul Ledoux was born in Forrieres, Belgium, on August 8, 1914. In 1937 he graduated form the University of Liege with a degree in physics. From 1937 to 1947 he worked in several research posts abroad. After doing research for two years in Scandinavia, he received a fellowship from the Belgian-American Foundation. This allowed him to work in the United States at the Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wisconsin, from 1940 to 1941. He was awarded his doctorate of sciences from the University of Liege, and he returned to the Yerkes Observatory for a further year's study after World War II. He was appointed as an assistant at the University of Liege in 1947, and made a professor in 1959. Ledoux's research concentrated on problems of stellar formation and structure factors that affect the stability of stars. Gravitation and the effects of relativity have been of particular interest to him. He has investigated the influence that internal nuclear reactions have on the structure of stable stars, and has also devoted considerable attention to the study of variable stars and their rotation.

Albert König was born on August 16, 1871, in Plettenberg, Germany. He was the son of the carpenter Peter Heinrich König. He studied mathematics, physics and chemistry in Berlin and Jena from 1891 to 1895. His doctoral thesis in 1894 (supervised by E. Abbe) was on the theory of Fresnel diffraction spectra. In the same year he began a lifelong work at the Zeiss works in Jena. He worked on telescopes, distance measuring equipment and various instruments. In 1919 he married the widow Barbara Lehmann, who may have also worked at Zeiss at that time. For his terrestrial telescopes he received a gold medal at the 1938 Paris Exposition. He died April 30^th 1946 in Jena.