Adriaan Blaauw

Research centers on the Milky Way system, particularly on its youngest stellar component. He showed that the star formation process leads to patterns of adjacent aggregates of new-born stars slightly differing in age. He explained the formation of a minor fraction of exceedingly fast moving young stars, by introducing the Supernova Scenario for massive close binary stars, thus also providing a link with the origin of pulsars. With M. Schmidt he edited the textbook Galactic Structure (1965). He was Director-General of the European Southern Observatory (1970-1974) and President of the International Astronomical Union (1976-1979), and published studies of the history of these organizations in 1991 and 1994. He is also involved in research on the history of Dutch village-settlements.